


Checkpoint

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Concatenation [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: Canon verse, Existing Relationship, Fluff, Intimacy, Love, M/M, Violence, adoration, ending rewrite, happy ending we promise, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5802850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Who knew that a bit of a holiday and some margaritas would put one at such risk,” Q laughs, a dire, mirthless sound. “I certainly didn’t. Not before you left, not even while you were there, in fact, presumably on a warm beach drinking something brightly colored with an umbrella in the top.”</i>
</p><p>A continuation directly on from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5197628">Concatenation</a>, which follows the Spectre canon storyline with a few minor <s>and entirely necessary</s> amendments to certain situations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Honeypot

“007?”

James turns, smile just as plastic, hands still against his vest doing it up.

“Report to Q tomorrow for medical.”

“Very good, sir.”

He leaves without a backward glance and considers taking that order earlier than suggested. He needs to find Q anyway. He hasn't been answering calls and perhaps he would take Bond's grounding as good news. One of them should, anyway.

He makes his way through the echoing labyrinthine passages of MI6 and finds himself inevitably in a giant hall with sprawling tables, all but barren, and no minions.

And no Q.

Bollocks. 

“Tanner.”

“007.”

“Has Q Branch downgraded to bare minimum staff?”

The smile he gets in reply is as thin and dry as the one he gives.

“New digs,” Tanner replies and with a sigh relents their whereabouts when Bond continues to watch him. He is a good man, Tanner. Clever. Unlike most of the asskissers left in this bloody place.

“Sir?” Tanner watches Bond at the door. “You will need a boat.”

\---

By the time Bond finally arrives, escorted by a member of SIS already on their way to deliver paperwork, his jaw aches from clenching. Having to sail the bloody Thames to reach Q might be less irritating had Q simply informed him that his branch was relocating. Might be. But he hadn’t, not a word, and while Bond’s no stranger to being swept away by work, he finds it difficult to recall a time in which Q wasn’t awaiting his return.

At home. At the office. At least with a message left letting him know in perfectly typed prose that he was buried with work but eager to see him. Perhaps even that he missed him.

Unease curls Bond’s stomach not from the boat but from stepping ashore, following his guide towards the door and through security. Through security again and again, in fact, an overwhelming network of biometric scanners, passcode systems, keys and locks and on and on. It’s a lot even for Q, and that’s saying something.

He snares a minion by the sleeve of her labcoat, a bushy-haired young woman who blushes, flustered. “007.”

“Where’s your quartermaster?”

“Sir, he’s not -”

“Don’t tell me he’s not in today.”

“No,” she says, crisper, brow arching at the interruption until Bond releases her sleeve. “He’s not taking visitors at the moment.”

“Marvelous,” James murmurs. “Then we won't be interrupted. Where is he?”

“007 -”

His look speaks volumes it seems, because with a sigh she relents and points him towards one of the messier tables, towards the back of the warehouse-sized space.

James goes. Pace after pace quiet on the heavy concrete floor. He can see the top of Q’s head buried amidst the piles of technical gadgetry and papers. He’s missed him. He wants nothing more than to curl his hands in his quartermaster's hair and breathe him in. He wants to sleep for a week and kiss him at every waking moment. He wants -

“Q.”

“Piss off.”

Bond’s stride misses a beat, as he slows. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not taking visitors right now and I know for a fact you’ve brought back nothing that could possibly be repaired. You never do.” Q remains bent across his work, a series of schematics and calculations, pencil in hand.

Bond blinks, brow furrowed and expression far from pleased. Sure, they have their disagreements. More often than not Bond returns with no equipment whatsoever. But he is rarely met with such venom.

“I managed back in one piece,” Bond replies, brow raised.

“So you have.”

Bond watches as the chill of his quartermaster’s tone is enough to send the remaining minions discreetly on break. Within a few beats, they’re left alone, the door clicking politely closed. Q lays his pencil down and rests his hand atop it, twisting his glasses free before slumping back in his chair, fingers pressed to his eyes so hard he sees stars.

“Who knew that a bit of a holiday and some margaritas would put one at such risk,” Q laughs, a dire, mirthless sound. “I certainly didn’t. Not before you left, not even while you were there, in fact, presumably drinking something brightly colored with an umbrella in the top on a warm beach.”

He drops his hands to his lap and inches his chair away from his work, standing with the stiffness that comes from being tense and motionless for far too long.

James just watches him. “Ah,” he manages.

“Do not,” Q holds up his hand and glares at him. “Do not give me some bullshit excuse, 007, about how we keep secrets for a living.”

“It was a classified mission, Q.”

“It wasn’t a mission at all, James!”

There is silence for a moment, damn near ringing in the space, and Q brings his fingers to his eyes again with a sigh.

“You blew up a block,” Q says slowly. “A block, James, in the middle of Mexico City during the Dia de Muertos - do you have any idea how many people could have died?”

“For God’s sake,” Bond frowns. “I expect this patronizing shit from M, but not you.”

Q’s eyes widen, another laugh strangled in his throat as he lifts a single finger. “Do not. Do not dare start -”

“Calling this what it is?” Bond asks, hands splayed and dropped to his sides. “Bollocks, Q, it’s bollocks - I thought you’d be happy I’m home.”

“I’d have been happy you’re home had you gone on a nice holiday and returned with a tan. I’d have been happy had you enjoyed the festival without causing an international incident. I’d have been happy,” Q says, raising his finger a little higher when Bond draws a breath to interrupt, “had I not had to hear from someone else why you were really there, because you didn’t see fit to tell me.”

James opens his mouth and closes it again. Q merely raises an eyebrow before dropping his hand with a deep sigh and then dragging both through his hair. For a moment, neither speak. Q drops his hands to his sides and shrugs, an exaggerated and irritated gesture, and turns on the spot before snaring up his glasses again.

Bond takes a step forward.

“I couldn’t have M know.”

“I’m not M.”

“You work for M,” he points out softly, and weathers the look of utter betrayal that is tossed his way for it. “All that bullshit with C and the mergers it’s… it’s getting complicated.”

“Complicated.”

“I’m sorry,” James says, taking another step closer. “I’m sorry you didn’t hear it from me. I was hoping to be home before you wondered where I was.”

Q forces a smile, tugging sharp against his cheeks, and lets it fall with a shake of his head before he sets his glasses carefully back in place. “Of course,” he says, his anger burning to ash, bitter and dry. “Then you’d not have to tell me at all, would you?”

Bond’s eyes narrow, jaw twitching a little before he eases it with a sigh.

“Better I not know, since I’m a security threat to you, apparently, in bed with C,” Q laughs, with another helpless shrug. “Better I simply accept your bullshit as truth, like a doting civilian spouse none the wiser.”

“You’d have worried unnecessarily.”

“It’s my bloody job to worry,” Q hisses. “And if you’d not returned? Then how long would I worry, having no idea what’d become of you, if you’d been hurt or killed and no one able to find you again? Did you think about that?”

“I was asked to keep it private,” Bond says. “I keep our conversations private, too, you know.”

“Do you?” Q asks, turning and taking another step back when Bond moves forward, one for one. “Aren’t you at all curious how I came to know? It certainly wasn’t by happenstance, nor your - your alleged attempts to _keep it private_. You didn’t tell _me_.”

Bond swallows and it tastes burnt in this throat. What can he say? What can he possibly say when the message itself had come as a visitor from the grave? He wants to say that it isn’t a lack of trust, but what it is he can’t convey or explain. Paranoia? Panic? Old loyalties to a woman who had died in his arms and him helpless to stop it?

“I’m a cad,” he says finally. “And a selfish bastard, and you are angry and I can’t bloody tell you not to be but I am sorry, Q.”

Q shakes his head but it’s weaker than before. He is weaker than before, as his anger burns away and leaves him cold and tired. Paranoia had been enough for him to uproot his entire division and move them. Paranoia enough for him to start seeking out flats where he could pay in cash. Never has Q handled a breach of trust with anything less than a complete destruction of whatever materials had caused it.

And now this.

His body aches, from the tension he’s carried in him for days and the tension he can’t help but think will linger in him long after this conversation. How is he to lay beside a man who lies to him - or worse yet, doesn’t trust him in return? How can they return to anything but a stilted and forced facsimile of what they had before, when it was them, together, against the world?

Q presses his fingers to his mouth, cheeks cool where the color has drained from them, and tries not to feel ill at the thought.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” he finally says, “if all that I’ve done isn’t enough for you to trust me. Perhaps it’s my fault -”

“Q.”

“- my fault for mistaking all of this,” he says, fingers fanning in front of his mouth and tucking closed again, “as friendship. I’m glad that your assignment - your not-assignment - was successful for you.”

Q draws a deep breath, forcing his lungs to fill, and turns to gather his schematics together.

Bond reaches him within two steps and sets his hands to Q’s shoulders, that immediately tense with a held breath and a small sound. He leans in, pressing his nose against the warm curls he has missed so much, breathing in the morning smell of his lover, still sleepy though he has been here for hours now, smelling gently of Bond’s shampoo and the earthy smell of cats beneath that.

His hands slide down to gently curl against the insides of Q’s elbows and Bond turns him, inch by inch, though Q resists, until they are chest to chest. And only then does he sink down to one knee, then both, and presses his forehead to the soft stomach before him.

“I can’t,” he whispers. “Not here, Q. Not here.”

_Please listen. Please hear me. Please let me make this right._

_But not here. Not_ here.

Q looks toward the ceiling and the bright lights overhead. He looks across the desks, mostly empty still, and to the door. He looks everywhere but down, certain that if he does it will unleash everything he’s trying so hard to keep inside.

Stiff upper lip, and all that.

But he brings up a hand to stroke softly through Bond’s hair, blonde strands parting between his fingers. He curls them and strokes again, again and again, attempting to soothe the agent at his feet despite that Q cannot soothe himself. A small sound works loose from his throat when Bond curls his arms around Q’s legs, grasping with firm fingers.

“James, I -” Q falters, jaw working hard before he tries again. “If we cannot communicate, if there’s no trust between us, there’s no hope for this to work.”

Bond trembles, just a little, just enough.

“Can you trust me,” he murmurs, “just a few hours more? Just enough for us to get home. To greet the bloody cats and turn on some trash on the television. Please.”

Q’s stomach tenses at the words. Vertigo threatens to destabilize him entirely at the simple request, a genuine seeking for domesticity that now seems all but a bloody farce. Q wishes he had the strength in him to say no, that he won’t be a blithe participant in someone else’s life like this. He wants to say no, that he can’t force himself to forget and no, he cannot maintain a relationship of spy versus spy. He will withhold information, too, in self-defense. They will devolve into polite smiles and small talk as each lives a life kept cordoned off from the other, pretending that nothing is wrong.

“I need to pack up my things,” Q says instead.

He wishes he were that strong, but he knows he isn’t and he wonders how in the hell someone as weak as he is ever got brought into the ranks of the intelligence service.

\---

The drive is fraught with tension and unspoken words. Q looks out the window, James watches the road. It seems to take hours to get to the little house they more often than not share now, and just as long for the fumbled keys and alarm sequences to be shut down.

Q greets his cats, deliberately dedicates that attention to them so he doesn’t have to look at the agent behind him, so he doesn’t have to face a potentially inevitable end to something that had such a promising beginning. But of course, who were they kidding, in truth? In what world would they be able to work?

He thinks of whispered promises and gentle sighs and shakes his head.

“Q.”

He turns only because reflex pulls him to, and meets James’ eyes only because he is used to doing it.

“Do you have a computer that cannot be tracked? Something neither M nor C, nor anyone else can find?”

Q draws a breath to answer, but holds it. The muscles beneath his eyes draw up and he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, releasing his breath slowly. All at once, his expression settles, his shoulders slump a little, and he bends to take off his shoes.

“If you’d like tea, the kettle should still have water in it from this morning.”

“Q.”

“I’ll get it.” Soft socks pad towards the stairs and up them. James doesn’t follow. He barely notices Desmond deliberately rubbing fur all over his pant legs. He watches Q ascend and only then goes to the kitchen to start the kettle for them both.

He listens as things are shifted around upstairs, hears the quiet grunts of Q when something is too heavy. Minute after minute, over and over, until finally Q returns, carrying with him something that may not have seen light since the 1980s.

“What is that?”

“A machine that hasn’t been connected to any network,” Q replies, setting it to the table and digging through the dusty cables to plug it in and start it up with a hum and whir of old exhausted fans. “Not wireless or ethernet. Nothing. Ever. It doesn’t exist.”

James blinks, delighted and astounded by the man he loves. He wants to tell him. Q’s expression makes him keep quiet, at least for now.

“Will it be able to -”

“I have a converter. We can watch on the screen, though it may have a time delay with audio. If there is audio.”

"There is," Bond says, stepping back as Q slips to his knees to seek out a Gordian knot of cords that he navigates readily. Bond watches him a moment more - his glasses slipping, tongue held pensive and pink between his lips - and reminds himself to breathe. "I'll make tea."

Q doesn't answer, focused on his work, and the brief respite it provides. Machines - even devilishly complex ones - are easy to understand. One plug goes here; another, there. His laptop whirrs to life and heat beneath his fingers.

Perhaps this is the last safe place on Earth for him. Circuits and boards as familiar as his own flesh. Free from the prying eyes of C and anyone else who would want to be trusted with access to his innermost secrets. Cut off from contact, completely.

He blinks, startled, when Bond stands beside him and offers down a USB drive. For a breath too long Q says nothing, does nothing. And when Bond asks him please, just that - _please, Q_ \- the quartermaster swallows a pained sound and takes the drive.

He has only ever allowed James to breach the inner sanctums of his heart and mind. It is a bitter and appropriate irony that he would be the one to breach this one too. Q says nothing as he inserts it.

The file is short, not even a minute in length, and Q waits for the computer to settle before letting it play.

On the screen appears M, expression as feline and stern as it had ever been. She watches them through the screen a moment before speaking.

Q listens. 

James listens, again, turned partially away so he doesn't have to watch. She mentions a name, she mentions a funeral. The video ends and the silence between them is filled only with the hiss and hum of tired rotors. 

“I couldn't,” James repeats softly. “Until I knew. And when I did I couldn't put you in that kind of danger, Q.”

There is little Q can say to this either. His words are, often, inadequate. He is sharp-tongued and prone to fluster. And when he aches as much as he aches right now, for M and for Bond and for the work they do that comes at the cost of any sort of normalcy for which they might ever hope...

It's all he can do to make himself breathe.

And so, quietly, tired in body and spirit, he closes his computer and removes the drive to set carefully aside. With little shuffling movements, he pushes across the floor and closer to Bond. His cheek no sooner presses to Bond's leg than familiar fingers curl in his hair.

"Next time," Q finally says, because there will always be one, "let me decide my own risk. Let me help you. Let me remind you now and then where my allegiance lies.” He releases a shivering sigh. “And next time," he adds, eyes closing, "try to manage a mission without bringing whole buildings down around your ears. Prat."

James hums and shifts enough to settle to the floor as well, pulling Q closer and resting his chin against Q’s shoulder as Q rests his against Bond’s. They are quiet again, and the exhaustion is palpable, weighing both down entirely with only days apart.

Q turns to nuzzle first, a gentle and seeking thing of utter warmth and adoration, and James brings his hands up to curl around him, breathing him in.

“Will you forgive me my ceaseless paranoia?” He asks, laughing quietly. “Occupational hazard.”

Q makes a misgiving sound and shifts, creeping closer, inching nearer.

"Only if you forgive me mine," Q says. "In a matter of days I've found a second flat and moved most of my division under a bloody bridge."

He finally slinks into Bond's lap when his agent - for he is his, like it or not - folds his legs. Slender arms snare firm around Bond's neck and Q sighs, nuzzling his hairline. His lips brush Bond's temple, and he sighs.

"I forgive you for not telling me," Q says, knowing that Bond needs to hear it as much as Q needs to feel himself say it. "Not sure how I feel about that block yet, though," he adds, rueful. "You're your own greatest menace, nevermind to all the people you've scattered."

Bond laughs and turns his head against his quartermaster. Gentle and nuzzling, warm and chaste kisses pressed again and again to corners of tired eyes and tense turns of their lips. Slowly they return to their familiarity, slowly they settle.

“A second flat?”

“Don’t change the subject regarding Mexico, 007.”

James sighs, smiles, lets his eyes close and leans back until he is on his back and Q nestled in on top of him. With a hum and a deliberate arch to adjust himself beneath Q, he considers his answer.

“I fell into a sofa.”

“Excuse me?”

“When I slid from the roof -”

“- that you collapsed.”

“That I collapsed. I landed on a sofa.”

Q's lips part, silent for a moment, held long before his brows slowly raise and he laughs. The sound flourishes wild from him, relief made audible after he so resigned himself to rarely feeling so pleased again. He buries his face against Bond's throat as his laugh eases to a grin.

"I don't know what god you've got looking out for you," Q mutters, "but you are lucky beyond all bloody reason."

"I find it less likely to be a god, if I'm honest. Something with a far more malicious sense of humor."

"Can't even attend a funeral without raining down chaos. What am I to do with you?"

James strokes his hands down from that beautiful curly hair, down his lovely curved back and back up again.

“Actually,” he murmurs. “The funeral is in three days.”

“No.”

“In Rome.”

“James, no.”

“You heard her,” Bond whispers, turning his head against his quartermaster. “‘Make sure you don’t miss the funeral’.”

Conveying his frustration with a tight, displeased little groan, Q remains otherwise quiet. He asked for this. He demanded it, in fact, upon the then-genuine threat of ending their post-professional relationship entirely.

His throat clicks when he swallows, and he manages a smile - or something near to it, anyway.

"What can I do to help?" He asks, measured, and surprisingly calm even as he adds, wry, "Engineer a portable, self-inflating couch, perhaps. How long do I have to make it?"

It's a question within a question, the one he wants to ask held beneath that damnable adherence to duty first.

_How long before you're gone again?_

_How long do I get to keep you?_

James hums and wraps his arms around Q’s small form.

“I will find the earliest flight the day of the funeral,” Bond says. “That gives us just under three days. And then I will be home again.”

“Will you?”

“Always.” Not even a hesitation, entirely sure and confident in that endearing puppy-dog loyal way he has. That he will always come home. That he will always make Q smile. That he will always be there for breakfast, even if they have a screen between them. “Always.”

"A sofa, then," Q says, his smile still small, but sweetly genuine. "Perhaps one built into your seat, like a lifeboat you can inflate next time you need to skid down the roof of a crumbling building."

"Fashionable."

"My foremost concern, clearly."

Q curves his fingers against Bond's cheek, fans them through his hair, follows the bridge of his nose down to lips that bend to kiss his fingertip. Q replaces it with a kiss of his own, undemanding and grateful. They cleave together, tangled close on the floor, stress easing beat by beat of their hearts.

"I'm glad you got to see her again," Q says, their brows pressed together. "Just like her to leave you with a mission, isn't it?"

“Quite,” Bond laughs, and it’s enough to ease the tightness in his chest that had held him sleepless and exhausted while in Mexico, on the flight home. He turns his nose against Q’s temple and frowns. “You haven’t slept.”

“Not well.”

Another hum, another sound, and Bond shifts just enough to move them, just enough to roll over to rest atop Q until the younger man snorts and shakes his head.

“Are you going to roll us up the stairs too?”

“I might.”

Another snort and Q presses a hand to his face, eyes closing. He is tired, the tension spilling from his bones leaves him more exhausted still. He wants nothing more than to nap, because they will have to return to the office tomorrow. They will have to play professional tomorrow. They will have to pretend as though this, the soft kisses and nuzzles and laughter, don’t exist for them.

“Come on,” James groans, pushing himself to stand, offering his hand to Q to take as he pulls him up and then higher still, over his shoulder as the little engineer laughs and squirms against him. “Upstairs.”

"You're a bloody menace," Q grunts, his laugh made tight by gravity. "You just want to take me down with you when you fall."

"We fell together already."

"Now you're going to woo me with poetry?"

"And kidnapping."

"Imminent danger and unexpected romance," Q muses. "I never stood a chance." He hoists his feet when Bond holds him around the back of his knees and starts up the stairs. The cats follow and Q stretches his fingers towards them, before letting his palms rest against Bond's bottom instead. "This is quite nice, though, despite your crushing my intimates against your shoulder."

James adjusts how he holds his quartermaster and the younger man squeezes his ass in thanks as he’s carried. Once the stairs are scaled, he heads straight for the bedroom. Desmond is on the bed before Q is upended onto it with a laugh, and Peter joins them as a silent shadow to butt his head against Q’s side, against James’ hand. Socks are pulled free and tossed aside, clothes are tugged off in a tangle until they are in their underwear and nothing more.

With a heavy sigh, Bond settles against Q and nuzzles behind his ear, gently sucking the lobe between soft lips until he hears him laugh again.

“For three days, bollocks to the office.”

“I'm sure they’ll notice if you’re not there.”

“M grounded me,” Bond groans, stretching his shoulders wide and collapsing back with another sigh. Q’s brows lift and he turns to his side, curling a leg over Bond’s and following with fingertips the firm outline of his stomach muscles.

“I’m glad to hear it, and not only so I can come home to find you half-asleep beneath my cats,” he says. “I find M to be eminently sensible.”

“You find him eminently shaggable, you mean.”

Q blinks, taken aback, before he laughs, cheeks warming. “And if I did? James Bond,” he chides, “are you envious that I might even look at another man?”

“I’m allowed to be,” he replies, smiling crooked when Q laughs again. “If too many fine gentlemen glance your way that I feel it is almost duty to show them that they may look if you allow it but come no nearer than that.”

Rough hands curl in dark hair and James scratches softly against Q’s scalp until the other near-purrs his pleasure at the sensation, eyes closed. Bond moves to take his glasses off him, to set them to the bedside table in case they - inevitably, it seems - doze together.

“He’s hardly a bad looking man, M,” he admits, and Q snorts. “But I doubt he would be quite as open to Desmond leaving offerings of his fur upon his suits nightly.”

Q arches, curving from shoulders to stomach to hips to tightening legs as he lifts his chin to allow Bond to root possessively beneath. He’ll leave a mark there - he always does when he’s feeling competitive - and Q will spend the following day both attempting to conceal it and fingering it softly as he works. A noisy suck shivers down Q’s spine as they curl together on their sides, body to body.

“Not a bad idea,” Q murmurs, turning his cheek against Bond’s own before another sucking kiss pulls his voice in a helpless sound. “Reminding me of your better qualities after exhibiting so very many poor ones, all at once.”

“If I’ve so many, perhaps you should pay M a visit.”

“After hours, a private meeting, the fate of the world in the balance,” teases Q. “‘However will we relieve such stress as this and clear our minds to save humankind? Oh, M, I shan’t dare!’”

“You’re being a shit,” Bond growls but he’s smiling, the corners of his eyes are drawn up and his lips follow as he slowly blinks and lets his body relax, muscle by muscle until he is near-melted to the bed with Q against him. His arm adjusts, just a little, to snake higher up Q’s shoulders and draw him closer, kissing him again.

This.

This is what he fights for. When he’s strung up or beaten down or talked to nausea by the psychopaths and megalomaniacs who try to destroy cities and countries and worlds. This is what he thinks of, and what he seeks to protect. The way Q’s nose wrinkles just a little if Bond blows air against it. The way his fingers twitch gently in sleep, the way he clings, lord how he clings, after sex.

“I missed you,” Bond murmurs. “Although I am glad you didn’t come to Mexico with me.”

“Oh? You would have listened when I told you not to blow down a block of flats then?”

“Git. No. If I’d seen you in that suit, bones painted elegantly down each long limb, a ceramic mask against your face, I may have forgotten how to breathe.”

Q squirms, akin to how his cats rub against Bond to mark him as their own. He rubs his skinny body in a long and languid stretch against his agent, hardly seeking anything more physical than that but pleased simply to feel their skin together, their hearts beating so close to the other. He tucks one arm between them, and rests his other palm against Bond’s cheek. He is flattered. He is more than flattered. Genuinely touched and brought to a little sigh past parted lips, that Bond thought of him. Thinks of him. Desires and misses him even in the face of such grave danger.

But his smile coils sleek, and Q asks only, “Eye candy, then, is what I’d be to you in the field, hm? Is that all?”

“And gadgets,” grins Bond, brushing their lips together, so close they touch when he speaks. “Mustn’t forget those.”

“No, certainly not. How else will we keep our budget from the government so high without you smashing millions of pounds of equipment?” Q snorts, nose crinkling as he smiles. “Shall I dress for you? Not now, but when we’ve the energy to make something of it? A tailored suit and a mask? Venetian perhaps, with dark lace against my cheeks?”

Bond groans, low and deep, and Q can feel his interest twitch against his thigh, just from that thought alone. It’s intoxicating. Truly and desperately intoxicating.

“You will have me speechless,” he murmurs, smiling when Q whispers _good_ against him. “And helpless and entirely at your mercy.”

“Shall I lead you by your tie again?”

Another groan, deep, that melds into the beautiful laugh Q so adores hearing as Bond arches and rolls his shoulders before returning to press close to his quartermaster again.

“Anywhere,” he confirms. “And I would follow without question.”

The words prickle goosebumps across Q’s skin. He strokes warm fingers along Bond’s cheek, down to his jaw to hold him still for a kiss, down onto his throat to feel his pulse. Heat and rhythm and a life that means more to Q now than his own. A life that he will protect to the ends of the earth, in any way he can.

“You’d do well to remember that, 007, when next you think of running off without me,” Q whispers. “Let me lead you. Trust that it’s my hand that holds you, and not another. Trust that never would I pass that responsibility to anyone, for anything.”

Bond grunts and smiles wider, accepting another kiss as it’s given. He wants nothing more. He cares little what anyone would say should they see them like this, him, older and taller, refined in dress and taste, entirely willing to bend to the slighter man’s every whim.

“So, quartermaster, what would you have me do now?”

“Sleep,” Q tells him, and James turns his head into the palm that softens against his skin. “Sleep and rest yourself properly. As long as you need.”

“Will you stay?”

“I will,” he smiles. “Until the cats need feeding, and you wake and need feeding.”

“And you?”

“When you eat.”

“I’ll be sure to wake then,” Bond grins, smiling wider still when Q laughs.

“Much obliged.”

“What else?” Bond asks him softly, already dozing under the watchful eye of his partner.

“It’s a very long list,” Q laughs again. “Beginning with -”

“Don’t mention the building.”

“- not destroying buildings where people bloody live,” Q finishes, pleased with himself and the groan his words elicit. They settle, entangled close, with little care to untwist themselves to even wriggle beneath the blankets. Seeking hands still against the other; a kiss shared parts to allow soft, sleepy breath between them. “For now, though, you’re doing everything I’d wish for already.”

Bond makes a curious sound, as Q kisses his cheek.

“You’re here,” Q says, “and there’s nothing more I want in the world.”


	2. Locator Program

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The blind leading the blind,” he murmurs, “the deaf dragging the muted. That’s what the bloody agency’s become.” He finds that his entire body is attuned entirely to the slighter one above him. He misses Q desperately when he’s away, he thinks only of coming home, safe, to be wrapped in skinny arms and curled up against. And now he’s here, he’s here and he’s tired and he’s barely out of danger and it’s Bond’s fault. It’s his fault and there is nothing he can do._
> 
> _This is too big to drop now. This is too big to give up._

For a moment, there is no sound at all. Not the clicking of endless typing, not the din of conversation. Not the strange buzz throughout the entire building that suggests endless surveillance. Nothing. Bond hears nothing and he cares for less because before him, nearly drowning in the fur-lined hood of an immense parka, stands Q, frowning, laptop bag on his shoulder and arms folded.

James blinks.

Around him, the volume slowly rises again.

He should say something, he wants to say something. But of all the sweet endearments, of all the dry jokes and coy lines, all he can manage is:

“You hate bloody planes.”

Even the word pales his windswept quartermaster, white as a sheet but for cheeks made ruddy by cold, lips pursing as if to restrain a wave of nausea that swells from within.

"Bully for me that this one was very small, hardly more than an airborne tin can. You know I do so love small spaces,” he says, nerves quickening the tempo of his voice. “And the mountains certainly helped. They create marvelous currents of air and constant turbulence. Numerous small planes have been downed in them, often unable to be recovered, so I’d that mystery to contemplate on the way up." Q pauses. "I was sick three times."

Bond steps closer slowly, wary that perhaps his quartermaster's presence here is an illusion, thin air and exhaustion taking its toll. "How did you find me?"

Q snorts, shedding his parka and letting his bag slip to the floor. Lifted fingers signal the bartender. "Apart for so little time and already you’ve forgotten all about me. What a bollocks question."

"Right. The - thing," Bond sighs.

“Finally made one you can’t drop into a bin,” Q says, quirking a slight smile, quickly muted as his eyes skirt past Bond to the floor. He folds his arms again. "I need to speak with you."

“We’re speaking.”

Q levels him with a look and James sighs.

“Well you just ordered me a drink, I can’t very well walk away.”

“This is serious.”

James’ eyes seek up towards the enormous office above the lobby again, watching as the heavy blinds are lowered further by slick remote as high heels click past the window and back around to stand behind the table.

“Are you staying here?”

Q sighs. “Room 12. But this is important.”

Bond’s sleeve is snared and he’s pulled around, enough to face Q properly, enough to get his full attention on the lovely man before him, who watches him with genuine concern, and genuine worry. He is still pale from his flight, still sick and dizzy, yet here he is, having taken the flight regardless, having possibly taken another to get to Europe itself instead of taking the train. He is here, and James cannot ignore him. He swallows.

“What is it?”

"You're going to be unhappy and I don't care right now."

"Not as unhappy as you when you find out what's become of the car."

Q's jaw twitches. "I've mourned for it already, when the GPS dropped dead after three days pinging from the Tiber river," he says. "I need you to come back with me."

"I can't," Bond says. "Not yet."

"Then when? While you're out here chasing ghosts, C's infesting headquarters and the next time M sees me is liable to be the last. One more 'not yet' from you and Moneypenny and I are finished. I'll be living under the damnable bridge rather than working in it, feeding the cats scraps from the Thames," Q snorts.

Bond feels the guilt tug at him, a brief twist in his chest he can’t quite shove away. Himself he could care less about. If he gets grounded, taken off a mission, told he cannot go in the field - he will go anyway. But his friends, people - good people - who happened to trust him, to help him, in jeopardy because of his recklessness?

“There’s someone I need to protect,” Bond replies quietly, and Q takes a deep breath before he releases it with a sound low in his throat riding shotgun. “I can talk to M.”

“M thinks you’re in Chelsea,” Q tells him, brow raised. “007, do you recall that you are grounded? That should news of your flight to Austria come to light you, too, will find yourself under a bridge.”

“At least I’ll be with you,” James smiles, eyes narrowing just a little.

Q shakes his head, but his gaze softens a little, affection and dismay tangling together.

"Git," he murmurs, suppressing a smile. "I've a career to protect - she and I both do, James, and if you don't fix this, soon, I'll have to. Please don't make me."

"I'll fix it," Bond responds, as he leans nearer the younger man whose eyes narrow at the tone.

"The right way. The proper channels. Not 'I'll fix it by destroying half a village' or 'I'll fix it by galavanting off to destroy multi-million pound prototypes in exotic locales'..." He trails off as Bond reaches to take his hand and turn his palm upward. His fingers unfurl warmth against Q's hand and the quartermaster's breath catches a little, a beat off rhythm.

The ring is heavy in his palm, made warm in Bond's keeping. Q's cheeks flood color and his brow knits, lips parting puzzled. He'd be lying if he said he'd never imagined it. He'd also be lying if he said he'd ever imagined it like this. All the world gone to hell around them, their lives on the line in every possible way, and Bond chooses now.

Right now.

Of course he does.

"007," Q softly laughs. "Are you asking me -"

"For a favor," Bond tells him, and Q swallows the rest of his question. “Find out what you can from this.”

He shifts the ring gently over and over in his palm, using his fingers to turn it to study. There is an engraved marking on the outside but nothing on the inside. Who knows how many people have touched it before Bond, how many fingerprints there will be to sift through to get to the one that really matters.

He wants a favor.

Of course he does.

“I really, really hate you right now,” Q mumbles, and tries to ignore how heavily his stomach sinks when the older man leans in to squeeze his hand. It was unlikely anyway. It was absurd. The thought alone was just -

“Thanks, Q.”

Yeah.

Gratitude and a favor.

“Room 12,” Bond confirms, and Q looks up, nodding. “One hour.”

There's no kiss between them, not here. They aren't tucked away in Q's kitchen readying for the day. They aren't in one of the few secret corners of headquarters stealing a moment together before Bond goes afield. They aren't in Q's office shutting down for the night before heading home together.

They're stuck on a mountain in bloody Austria. A kiss is the least of their concerns.

Let alone -

Well. It doesn't matter now, does it? Q watches as Bond goes, his drink untouched, and Q takes a sip of it in his stead. Only that much, considering that he's exhausted enough to have even imagined something so ridiculous, to say nothing of another impending flight.

He needs sleep, and a shower. And a bloody toothbrush. Gathering himself into his parka again, bag over his shoulder, he slips the ring into his pocket and turns to seek his room once he's certain Bond is gone.

\---

Bond knocks, steps back, waits.

Madeline had refused to come in, opting for a room of her own down the hall, and in truth Bond could not be more relieved. Should she run, he will find her again. Someone would, certainly, but even if she decided to merely sleep, consider her options, all Bond needs is a night, even just one, to spend with Q.

There are footsteps on the other side of the door and then it opens on the chain. Q squints through the crack in the door and sighs relief when he sees who it is. Sliding the chain free he opens the door and turns away to let Bond enter on his own. His hands tremble and he pushes them into his pockets. On the table, dragged to face the window, his laptop sits and scans the ring over and over on a little pad attached to the computer itself.

The rest of the room looks untouched. He hasn’t slept. He hasn’t even unpacked.

“Q.”

"Thank God you're here," Q mutters. "About bloody time."

"It's only been an hour -"

"Nearly enough time for me to wind up without that," he says, pointing to the ring and curling his shaking finger back into a fist again, crammed into his pocket. "Or kidnapped. Or shot and tossed down a mountainside."

"Q, breathe," Bond tells him. A step closer finds that Q stops his pacing but doesn't withdraw, and so Bond closes the distance between them, hands on his little engineer's trembling arms. Wide eyes blink up through thick glasses and Q manages a high, wild laugh.

"I escaped them," he says. "Two men, I don't know whether they saw me or the ring, but I got away, James. Ducked into a crowd and disappeared and -" He laughs again, panicked and delighted both. "I hid in a closet!"

Bond’s heart slows, it goddamn stops for a moment before he gathers Q to himself and holds him. Feeling him tremble, feeling him nervously giggle until the sound becomes harsher and he unfurls his arms to press them between them to remain small and held and protected. James turns his head against warm curls of hair and closes his eyes, holding his quartermaster close, soothing strong hands up and down his back.

“You are so brave.”

“I’m not bloody brave,” Q snorts. “I ran like a child and hid behind a door.”

“Sometimes the smartest thing to do is run,” James points out and Q glares at him over the rims of his glasses, through the curls that fall over his eyes.

“Care to follow your own advice once in a while?”

“I do,” James laughs. “Often. A lot of my time is spent running and hiding behind doors.”

"Landing on well-placed couches."

"Blending in with crowds of tourists."

"I did that," Q murmurs. "I suppose it helps being skinny enough that one can hide behind a snowboard."

"I'd say you're well on your way to being a very capable field agent," Bond says with a smile. It lasts only a moment before the bruising impact of Q's words begins to ache. Q was in danger, imminent danger, and though Bond has never once truly doubted Q's skill in virtually everything he does, it was Bond's fault that he was at risk in the first place. His fault that Q is here. His fault that the situation at headquarters is so precarious that Q came to find him to save himself and Moneypenny both.

"Will you sta-" Q begins to ask, before he shakes his head and leans away enough to regard Bond. "Do you have a spare gun, by any chance? Stands to reason that I keep you laden with them but don't think to bring one for myself. Just in case they come back. I've a flight out tomorrow, but -"

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers, turning his nose against Q’s hair again, one hand absently seeking back to pull a gun from his belt, holding it out to his quartermaster to take. “I’m not letting you out of my bloody sight until you’re on that plane again.”

"Rather take a bus back but it's far too much time to meditate on my impending joblessness," Q mutters, accepting the gun and checking the chamber, as he tilts his head catlike against his agent to seek more affection. "I'll be fine getting there, so long as there's a closet nearby in case anything does happen."

He lets the gun hang heavy at his side, finger resting against the barrel still warm from being tucked so close to Bond's body. Leaning heavy - exhausted - into his arms, Q turns his cheek to Bond's shoulder and breathes in the scent of snow and sweat from his collar.

"We're counting on you," Q tells him. "Both of us."

“I know,” James seeks with his hand down to Q’s elegant wrist, gently turning it to take the gun from him again and set it to the table behind him. He wraps his arms up high over Q’s shoulders, holds his head gently and strokes his hair, eyes closing as Q’s arms snake around him and hold on.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I got you into this shit. That you had to fly here, that you have to always bring me in from my wayward wanderings.”

“You’re a bloody menace.”

“I’m your bloody menace,” Bond laughs, and cradles Q a little closer. “I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you will be if you’ve got to let us all come live in your posh penthouse. It’d be like a bad sitcom,” Q says, grinning against his agent’s shoulder. “Desmond would lay waste to that leather couch of yours.”

“Should have just messaged me that instead of coming all the way here, I’d have been home in a heartbeat.”

Q lifts a smile to Bond, and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Another, as he’s walked backwards towards the bed. Another before it comes up behind his knees and he drops to sit on its edge, watching as Bond kneels to the floor before him and begins to work off Q’s snow-soaked boots.

“I needed to get away. Enough that I was willing to risk life and bloody limb for it, not to mention my stomach all over the floor. It’s mayhem. I’ve never seen an office regularly populated by the grim and stressed so particularly grim and stressed.”

Bond leans in to kiss against Q’s shin, then up to his knee, eyes closed and worshiping reverent as he sets his shoes away. He peels his socks free, draws hot palms against Q’s thighs, up and up until he can curl them around his hips, kissing soft to Q’s legs as they gently spread before him.

“The blind leading the blind,” he murmurs, “the deaf dragging the muted. That’s what the bloody agency’s become.” He finds that his entire body is attuned entirely to the slighter one above him. He misses Q desperately when he’s away, he thinks only of coming home, safe, to be wrapped in skinny arms and curled up against. And now he’s here, he’s here and he’s tired and he’s barely out of danger and it’s Bond’s fault. It’s his fault and there is nothing he can do.

This is too big to drop now. This is too big to give up.

Q curls his fingers through Bond's hair, silken strands shining as he strokes soothing down to his agent's neck and back up again. Q has little doubt that no other could calm him after what happened; less likely still could anyone else ease him to playfulness. None but this man - this infuriating, insufferable, smug, pompous prick of a man - makes Q's heart beat so swiftly.

God save them both.

"You underestimate, in your reliance on us, how much we rely on you," Q tells him. "Certainly, Moneypenny keeps you from getting tossed on your duff by M. I keep you from courting death unarmed. You'd be lost without us -"

"Go back to what you were saying before," mutters Bond against his belly, and Q laughs a little.

"Without you, we're only a secretary too clever for her own good, and an engineer too unpleasant to be worth the bother. We need you," Q says again, cupping Bond's cheeks in his hands to bring their gazes together. "Beautiful fool."

James watches him with utter adoration, and seeks gently beneath Q’s sweater and shirt to spread his hand flat against his stomach. He caresses there with his thumb until Q squirms, tickled, and shifts back, farther, farther, and James climbs onto the bed atop him and kisses him deeply, laughing as Q does, nuzzling when Q turns away.

“I missed you scolding me,” he murmurs, eyes down as Q draws his fingers up the line of the zipper of his sweater and grasps the zip to tug it open. “I missed you, in general. I always do.”

Q stretches, pleased always by praise from Bond, whereas anyone else gets a dismissive remark or a snort at best. He spans his hands across Bond's shoulders, working the jumper off of him.

"We've scarcely had time enough to miss each other properly," Q says, lifting his arms when Bond tugs his red-striped jumper off over his head in turn. Quick fingers settle his glasses, though his hair remains wild, and Q bends upward a little into Bond's hand when it runs along his chest.

"But I did," Bond tells him. "And you did."

"I'm only moderately sleep-deprived."

"But you did."

"Not even enough time to sync my internal clock to where you are."

"It's only an hour apart."

"And with all the work to be done, on and bloody off-record because the former clearly wasn't enough..."

"Stop cocking about," Bond tells him, hand against Q's jaw to bring his attention back from working open Bond's shirt. "And tell me that you missed me," he smiles, eyes narrowing. Q returns his smile, until his lips part when Bond lowers his own against them.

"From the moment you left," Q whispers.

“Good.” The kiss is gentle, soft. This isn’t a frantic need to tug off clothes and litter them all over the room, this isn’t the desperate need to get off, rutting at each other by the door and against walls. This is intimacy and soft Saturday mornings, still early enough that the light looks grey. This is whispered secrets against damp skin. This is who they are, once the heavy words and cool pretending at the office is done.

James arches above him feline and long, arms holding him up against his quartermaster but not yet letting himself blanket him properly. He wants to see him, wants to touch every inch of skin he is allowed before Q laughs, turns, shifts, and decides who of them is beneath the other and who needs to find the lubricant.

He spreads his hand beneath the soft and well-worn check shirt and pushes it up to reveal pale skin beneath. Skin he knows, skin he’s tasted and loved and adored. He bends, now, and parts his lips in a wide, wet kiss just above Q’s navel and smiles when he hears the other laugh.

"What I'd have given for you to be on that miserable flight with me," Q says with a crooked grin and a long stretch, flat belly tightening before another kiss loosens him with a laugh.

"I'd have been in high risk had I been doing this." Bond inches his quartermaster's shirt up higher, touching his lips to the soft skin revealed. "We could, you know."

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

"Now that you've decided you can do it. Paris, perhaps. Tokyo.”

"You decided for me, 007, and all it's done is confirm that I want nowhere near an airplane ever again. After tomorrow," he adds, punctuating the statement with a small, displeased noise. It ebbs as Bond frames his waist with broad hands, and sighs heat against his stomach. "This, though," Q says, tilting a smile down to his agent. "This is nearly enough to make it worth it."

"Nearly enough?"

"To make it all worth it. The job and the politics, C and M and every other bloody letter including my own, the stress,” he sighs. “Hiding in broom closets.”

“All of that, in exchange for this,” Bond asks, touching another kiss to Q’s stomach, enough to tickle a grin from the younger man.

“Because I know that if we do our jobs right, at the end of an assignment, I'll get to have you just like this," Q says. "And I get to have your flat, which it seems I'll be moving into imminently, a cat under each arm."

“Empty threats,” James laughs, nuzzling against Q enough that his shirt shifts right up to catch under his armpits. He sucks against a nipple, settles heavy over Q with a sigh of pleasure when the other shivers and snares his fingers in James’ hair. There is little he loves more than worshiping Q’s body. Little he would rather spend his time doing.

He smiles as Q fidgets above him, fumbling with the buttons and arching up a little to yank his shirt off and toss it aside. Bond frames his skinny form with wide palms, counts his ribs with tickling fingertips and continues sucking hot wet wide kisses against Q’s chest.

He groans when Q draws up a knee between his legs and Bond can rub against it, already growing hard from this alone. From being here, together, from having this, even for one night.

One night.

One more to make their own.

Held fast between their fingers, caught in their kisses. Spent together in tangles of limbs and whispered promises, teasing sighs and shivers of bliss. One night at a time, stolen from statistics and stress, kept sacred in the spaces formed by their bodies. Both know well enough that there is no time to take for granted. Every instant they share alone together - shagging, sleeping, sharing space - is a bloody blessing.

And tonight, it was Q himself who held so tightly to the twined thread of their fate and moved quick to keep it theirs.

He laughs, as Bond's calloused hands tickle across tender skin. He moans, as Bond's mouth wraps against his pulse. Swift fingers open his trousers to free himself as Bond ruts hard against his leg and Q digs a heel to the bed to give him ballast. Their eyes meet, gaze held, and with a rush of color to his cheeks and a crooked grin, Q whispers that he loves him.

James makes a sound, soft and humming and low, and leans in to kiss the words from him, playfully asking him to repeat it, again, again, until they both laugh and James tells him the same. He loves him, stubborn git that he is. He loves him, controlling and paranoid and neurotic. He loves him, as he has never loved another.

Sliding down Q’s body, Bond sets his feet to the floor again. Peeling Q’s trousers and pants from him, leaving him bare, Bond kisses his way up his leg again, against the inside of his thigh, nuzzling against the hot hollow of his hip until Q draws his legs up and squirms.

“Turn over,” James purrs, voice low and eyes up to watch Q watch him. Q coils to his side, languid, rubbing his hips down against the bed as he lays on his stomach. James snares his fingers in Q’s hair, just enough to gently tug. He kisses against his shoulder and down his spine, counting the vertebrae with the light nuzzling of the top of his nose as he breathes a warm path down to the tempting, wonderful curve of Q’s ass.

With a playful bite, just against one cheek and just to hear him cry out in surprise, James buries his face between Q’s legs, breathing him in a moment before kissing against the sensitive skin of his thighs. Q lifts his hips, as obedient as he is needy, and James gently bends his cock back to suck. His moan of pleasure at something so simple tugs Q’s body from the bed, pushing against the mattress, bottom in the air.

“You spoil me,” Q laughs into the mattress, turning his cheek to it and closing his eyes. He rocks backward as familiar fingers milk his cock to fullness, seeking out warmth and wet, gasping at the pressure as Bond sucks noisily against him. The sound carries beneath Q’s skin, prickling it in a shiver of delight, the room cold but his body suddenly flushed.

Working himself to his elbows, to his hands, on all fours, Q turns to look across his shoulder and watch Bond behind him. It isn’t enough, even when he fixes his skewed glasses, so he looks beneath himself instead, past elbows and knees, to see Bond nuzzling upward to suckle him deep. The sight and sound and the bloody _feel_ of it is enough to cinch Q’s belly tight with pleasure, already threatening to unspool in a rush of orgasm.

Bond’s eyes barely open but he can feel the tension ratchet through Q. This tension he is used to. This tension he knows is good. It is followed by trembling and gentle undulations, by sweet gasps and whispered curses.

He sucks harder. Pressing his hand against the plush curve of Q’s ass, Bond holds him still as he takes him apart, fingers gently kneading the muscle that tenses and relaxes against him. He moans, taking Q deeper before pulling back entirely, noisily sucking in the thread of spit that joins his lips to Q’s cock.

“Put your chest to the bed,” he encourages, kissing hot against Q’s thighs.

Even that - a request, a command, softly spoken - is enough to make Q whimper. “I can’t,” he laughs. “I’m going to -”

“Bend, quartermaster.”

Another blissful sound shudders free of the little engineer, and in increments, he lowers himself, back to his elbows, and down another step to tuck his arms against his chest. Resting his cheek against the cool sheets, Q’s need pitches his voice high and aching. Despite how precarious his climax roils between his legs - from being told, from being in this position, because of Bond, always Bond - Q bends his back deep, belly towards the bed, and bottom high.

“Hard, 007, hard enough to last me until the next time I see you,” Q murmurs, biting his lip in a grin.

“Demanding,” Bond replies, kissing against one cheek. “Needy.” The other. “Desperate thing, aren’t you?”

“James,” Q whines, laughing into the sheets as he’s spread wider, as still-clothed knees press against his trembling bare ones. He shivers as he hears the click of the belt, the zipper being lowered, the shuffle of fabric as Bond frees himself enough to stroke, to groan at the feeling and watch his lover beneath him, so close that he’s dripping to the sheets. He allows himself a moment to look, to see and take it all in, and then he spits into his hand and relishes the groan the sound alone draws from Q.

“Savage,” snarls his quartermaster, though his grin is audible even as he tries to hide it against the sheets. His cock swells as Bond strokes himself again, a bead of fluid swelling and dripping clear in a viscous thread to the bed beneath. Another coarse spit sends Q coiling, fingers curved against the sheets, body rocking and cock pressing into the air.

“You asked me to give it to you hard,” Bond reminds him. “I’d be a bad lover and a worse agent if I disappointed my quartermaster.”

“Then don’t, 007.” Q begs with his body, a twist of hips that’s positively sinful despite how intensely he knows he’s blushing. “Try to keep up, if you can.”

Bond curses, bending to press his forehead between Q’s shoulders as he lines up. The blunt head of his cock bumps against the clenching muscle and then he pushes in. One hand down to hold himself up against the bed, the other guiding himself in, he murmurs sweet nothings against Q’s neck when he shivers and fusses, pushes back and makes the most incredible sounds.

“Hold still,” he breathes. “Let me feel you.”

Q buries his whine against the mattress, knuckles white and the hapless sheets caught in his fists. Everywhere, he shivers. Everywhere, he shakes. Everywhere, he is alive. Bond seeks deeper and Q’s voice rises, the dark damp patch beneath his cock spreading as precome is pushed from him. Breath is pushed from him, trembling even in his voice.

It hurts.

It’s wonderful.

“I love you,” Q moans. “God, I -”

“Brave little quartermaster,” Bond murmurs, hands against Q’s hips to keep him steady, incremental movements of his hips rolling him deeper into heat, friction, pressure, pleasure, Q who bends for him and makes the most extraordinary sounds.

“Not - I’m not,” laughs Q, as the fore of his body gives way entirely and his feet lift from the bed, toes curling. “No -”

“Beautiful, brave man,” Bond purrs, pulling out just enough before pushing back in again. “Clever boy.”

“Really?”

“Considering how often...” James shifts up to set his hands on either side of Q’s shoulders, hips shifting shallowly in and out of his quartermaster. “You call me old man, comment on my age, hardly let me forget that I am twelve -”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen years your senior, I believe I have every right to call you _boy_ ,” he whispers, shoving in deep and holding still, just to feel Q squirm and whimper against him.

And he does, beautiful roiling motions that carry from shoulder through spine and crash against his hips, bucking them high. With undulations spurred by gasping breath, Q struggles to regain himself. He can’t. He’s so full, so stretched, he can hardly move at all without Bond’s cock pressing against his prostate and cutting his breath to nothing. He can hardly breathe without feeling as though he’ll be torn apart by pain and pleasure both.

But he can speak, a little, just a roughly purred whisper across his shoulder.

“...being shagged by a pensioner…”

And the thrust of Bond inside him, already buried, rocking him forward into the bed, rattles Q’s voice from him in a long and aching moan, as he seeks with trembling fingers for his own cock.

His fingers are snared, gently, and his hand stretched out above his head, Bond’s twined with them as he starts a faster rhythm, pulling out far enough that the push back in is pressure and power and too damn bloody good for either of them to keep up conversation. Once in a while a word, a choice phrase, begging and pleading and laughter and praise, but hardly sentences, hardly poetry between them.

They don’t need them.

They have each other.

They have this.

“Come on,” James moans, low and demanding and heady. “Come on, Q.”

Tighter, tighter, Q squeezes James’ fingers between his own. Higher, higher, his voice rises as his breath shortens. Beneath them the bed rattles, around them the room spins. Q’s eyes drift shut as his lips widen, and with a sudden crease in his brow - like the flash of lightning before a peal of thunder - his body ripples tense.

Without a hand upon him, his cock jerks against his belly and stripes it with a thick rope of come that drips to the bed beneath. Another, another, each pulse of pleasure pulling tight around Bond’s cock, each wave that dizzies the quartermaster works loose Bond’s own release inside him.

The ache builds slowly, as Q sinks to the bed in a slow, shaking sprawl. James’ trousers rub soft against his legs as he lays atop Q, sweaty bodies cooling rapidly in the chilly room, but for where they are pressed flush together. Q doesn’t let go of Bond’s hand. He won’t, not truly, and when he must it will be only temporary.

He brings his agent’s fingers to his lips and kisses them, numb lips curving softly.

Bond nuzzles against him, deliberate rubs and turns of his head, like a giant cat marking its territory, before he settles.

“You’re a right mess, you are,” he mumbles, laughs when Q grunts beneath him and kisses behind his ear. “I am about to drag you to the bloody shower. You know I can if I have to.”

“Why?”

“So we can sleep like proper adults, clean, and for far too bloody long before your plane is due.”

“What on earth would possess you to remind me of that?” Q complains, with another fussy noise as Bond pushes back from him, and slips himself out. “Get back -”

The sound of a bullet loading into a chamber is unmistakable. But Q checked the gun before it was set aside, he knows it was fully loaded. He sets his hands to the bed but stops as James says simply, calmly.

“Darling, move very slowly, and don’t hide your hands.”

Surely not.

Surely not like this.

Not after everything they’ve done together, at MI6, in their homes - not after learning each other inside and out, like the beat of their own heart.

“Why?” Q asks, as he turns slowly to his back, hands lifted. “James, why -”

“ _Don’t you know it’s common courtesy to lock the door?_ ” One of the men says, French curling rough and low from his lips. Q doesn’t understand him.

“ _Isn’t it also common courtesy to knock before barging into someone’s room when they’re busy?_ ” Bond replies, watching Q, just Q, as he smiles, as he winks in reassurance, and winces when he’s roughly shoved to his knees.

“Dress,” one of the other men spits in crooked English. “Unless you want to be presented in this.”

“Presented?”

The single word is enough that a second gun angles towards Q, forcing shallow breath to steady as he looks away. Careful movements find his feet to the side of the bed, and Bond’s gun just there. An instant’s hesitation yields a sound from James, low, and Q reaches past the weapon to take up his clothes and slowly dress. He cinches his belt closed and as he turns to Bond with a laugh, he palms the ring into his pocket as the men raise their eyes to watch him put on his glasses.

“My kingdom for a broom closet.”


	3. Entropy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s the last time Q sees him._
> 
> _It’s the last time he’ll ever see him._

Q is told to bring his computer, and he does, cradling it against his chest. He is told not to open it until they say so, and so he doesn’t. His phones are taken from him, and he is informed that he will be expected to unlock his computer for their technicians, the point enforced by the sharp pressure of a gun barrel against his ribs. He says nothing, but only watches his agent as Bond is seated across from him, stoic and so tired that Q’s chest hurts for him more than the gun in his side. Dark circles ring beneath his eyes, the lips Q kissed not half an hour before now thinned and pale. His wrinkles run deep and his jaw sets hard, drawing unforgiving shadows in the lines of his face.

“At least I got to see Austria,” Q laughs, before his breath hitches sharply and he goes quiet again.

When they are driven away in a windowless van, Q doesn’t respond. When they stop, and emerge into a world of black sky and white snow, Q doesn’t respond. Only when they take him by the arms, and two other men take Bond in another direction, does Q finally react, exploding forth, frantic.

“Wait,” he says. “No. No, wait, please -”

“Breathe,” Bond tells him, his words pooling grey into the cold mountain air, so icy it burns their lungs.

“Stop,” Q exclaims as he twists his arms hard enough the sockets scream in protest. His feet slip against the ice when he tries to hurtle himself towards his agent. Frozen snow crackles beneath his toes. His knees. A hand thrust down to catch himself. Q falls and grabs and tries to push himself up and a swift backhand spills steaming blood, night-black, against the snow beside his fallen glasses. He can’t hear what they’re saying. He doesn’t know where he is. His head is full of processors all humming too loudly, overloaded, and all Q can see is Bond brought low when they’ve had enough of his thrashing, too.

It’s the last time Q sees him.

It’s the last time he’ll ever see him.

They never made it to quiet retirement, grousing softly at the other in a home of their own. All the promises they spoke return in a rush so sudden that Q feels as if he’s drowning beneath a flood of afternoons in the park and laughter over dinner, sun-soft mornings and the steady rocking of their bodies pushed together. Q thinks he’s laughing but he’s not, shoulders shaking as he clutches his computer to his chest, hauled to his feet again.

Q’s heart jerks at its moorings and he swears it’s cut itself on bones sharp as blades. His lungs fill with fluid, his chest with blood, his heart isn’t there anymore to pump it away and he’s choking, gasping, every breath too short and every breath too painful and he’s hyperventilating and he can’t stop.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t do the one thing James asked him to do. The last thing.

“Let him go,” Q begs, and he hates his weak high voice, pleading and pathetic. “Please, please, he doesn’t have what you want. Keep me.”

“He wants both of you,” comes a gruff accented voice, and then Q is hoisted up again, under unresisting arms as he tries to breathe, and he can’t see Bond before his eyes roll back and he faints.

He isn’t woken by sleepy nuzzling, he isn’t woken by his cat purring and pawing against him, seeking love and attention and food. He’s woken by a bucket of ice cold water being poured over him, the temperature so harsh he sits up quick enough to make himself dizzy again, before setting unbound hands to the rough mattress he had been tossed to. Q doesn’t know where he is, just that the room has no windows, or no windows clean enough to let any light in. There is a bulb and it’s bright enough with how Q’s eyes are attuned to the dark. It’s dank in here. It smells like old breath and he frowns, pressing his fingers against his face to try and settle his glasses.

They’re not there.

His computer is, though, on a table across from him. He squints. There’s a bucket, its purpose clear, and a metal sink bolted to the wall. Above him, across from him, beside him, all around him are cameras, centered on him with single red lights betraying their activity.

He doesn’t call for James. He doesn’t say a word. He only shivers as he stands, swaying unsteady, and rests a hand against the wall. The left side of his face feels heavy and he lifts frozen fingertips to it, prodding the swelling bruise there, fat and dense.

Moneypenny knows Q has cats. He hopes she gets to them before the automated feeders run out.

“The computer,” crackles a voice from a speaker Q can’t see. He can’t see bloody anything and he supposes it doesn’t really matter, ultimately, because he isn’t going to survive this. “Approach it slowly, open it, and unlock it. Step back when you have.”

Q laughs, breath spooling hot into the air. He knows what he signed up for when MI6 recruited him. He knew the risks when he came here. What he didn’t know was that he’d find someone to love so very much along the way, and as Q approaches his computer, he takes comfort in knowing that at least they had that, for a little while. The computer is low on battery, he notices by habit as he opens it, and Q taps the brightness a few times to save his eyes the pain of such intense light.

“Can you still see the screen?” Q asks.

A pop and a crackle. “Yes.”

The quartermaster draws a breath, fingers spreading fondly over the keys he has known so well, for so many years. The letters long ago rubbed off, but he knows them like he knows his own body, a constant companion. Across the back are stickers from moments, people, places that remind him why he does what he does.

Why he did what he did.

M told him after a meeting once that the stickers look unprofessional. Q responded he was glad for others to think he is, as it gives him more room with which to surprise them.

And so he does. Cracking the screen back, it’s one long lunge to the sink and he slams the notebook down. There are voices, immediately, a latch snapping open, but not fast enough to stop Q from twisting the stiff knobs of the sink wide open onto his computer.

Breaking a screen would do little. Screens can be replaced. But drowning the hardware, enough that there would be no fan, not enough rice in the world to dry it enough to get information in time, that would be enough to give Bond time to work his magic. To find a way out of this and back to MI6.

Q watches the taps turned off as quickly as they had been turned on, watches two men shake his computer as though that would be enough to dry it, to save the contents. He smiles when it’s taken away, watching it go and leave him too. The two most important things in his life, now gone, not here to see him beaten to death or starved or frozen or whatever these people have planned for him.

A punch in the face, apparently, is the best they can come up with for now.

The door closes again, and Q is left in quiet.

At least he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

The thought is enough to fill his lungs through guttering, wet breath, and Q laughs. He laughs hard, and loud. At least he wasn’t wearing his glasses, because now they’d be broken. He smears his nose against his cardigan as his laugh shakes him too much to stand, so he rests his cheek against the smear of blackening blood on his sleeve and curls to his side. See, it’s funny because his glasses were knocked off his face out in the snow, lost or crushed. Gone. So he doesn’t have them on. So it’s okay that he just got punched so hard he can’t breathe through his nose.

It’s okay he’s going to die here.

It’s okay that not a soul back home knows he’s here to even bring his body back.

Q curls tighter in on himself, and sobs softly into his arm.

\---

They ask a lot of questions. They ask about Bond and MI6, they ask where his loyal protectors are now, when he is here, cold and dirty and very hungry. They ask about the data on Bond’s nano trackers in his blood, they want to know here he was before he came to Austria, how he knew to come here, they want to know who he spoke to, what he found.

They don’t ask Q about himself.

He doesn’t matter to them.

It makes it harder not to retaliate, though, when the man he loves is described in cruelly derogatory terms, when he is called all kinds of lies and his promiscuity is brought to the surface. Q doesn’t respond. He tries not to respond. He sits where they seat him, and stares where they point, and he says nothing.

Some nights they come in and remind him why he’s here, leaving him sore and exhausted on the damp, reeking mattress. Some nights they don’t let him sleep at all.

Q bathes himself with water from the sink, when he has to, taking stock of bruises and cuts and grateful when he finds no broken bones.

Q uses the bucket, when he must, and ducks his head to keep the blur of tears in his eyes away from the camera’s unblinking attention.

He doesn’t eat, when they bring him some meagre crust of stale bread. That doesn’t bother him. He’s used to going days without food when he’s deep in the throes of a new project. He tries to think of this as his last one, the final piece of his legacy that maybe someone will someday discover, long after his name - his letter - has been etched into the memorial wall deep beneath London.

He worries for his cats.

He worries for James. And Q talks to him, sometimes, in the endless grey hours of a place with no way to measure time’s passage. Though they were certainly observed in their intimacy, Q still doesn’t say his name aloud. But he does talk to him, little things, soft things that in the reeling no-man’s-land of surreal exhaustion are a comfort to hear again, even in a frail whisper.

Q asks if he would prefer English Breakfast, or Earl Grey.

He asks if he’s going to watch the match today, and does he want to go to the shop before to get a few lagers.

He asks if he’s feeling alright. If he’s well. If he’s rested and warm and had enough to eat and he tells him that he loves him and he tells him that he loves him and oh, God, he tells him that he’s always loved him and he always will and he hopes that he can hear it.

They make him eat when he doesn’t, and it’s an experience Q never wants to repeat so he eats after that. He listens to them ask him questions. He doesn’t answer them. He pretends he isn’t scared out of his mind when they lead him to a plane and buckle him in. He pretends he isn’t hoping it will crash so that at least this will all be over. He pretends he’s fine up until the moment he isn’t, when he’s sick into the little paper bags left in the back of the seat for just that reason.

He hears only vaguely that they’re in South Africa, feels that it’s warmer. He doesn’t see much before they shove a bag over his head and load him into a car. The ride is long enough for him to fall asleep and he does, able to for the first time in what feels like months but has probably only been days, weeks at most.

When they wake him, it’s to walk. And he walks, obedient and quiet into yet another cell with yet another sink and another understuffed mattress for him to lay on. He sits where he is put, head down and hands clasped and feet folded. He won’t run, they know he won’t, he barely had the strength to walk here.

Then he hears footsteps, three sets at least. Curiosity pulls at him and he looks, though his entire being clenches and his mind screams no. His heart pulls him to look, his eyes lift and he can’t stop them and he watches as James is led between two men, his suit dirty with blood and dust, his face marked with scrapes and bruises, lip split and bags purple and yellow under his eyes.

But he’s alive. He’s _alive_ and he’s here -

“James -”

He looks up, even though Q’s voice was barely a rasp, barely a whisper, and his eyes widen, bright, with pupils small from pain, and he wrenches himself free to jerk towards the door to Q.

The human body, under extreme duress, is capable of remarkable things. Muscles fire with adrenaline. Heart rate surges. Mothers have moved cars off pinned children, firefighters plunge into collapsing buildings again and again to heave out the injured. And Bond’s quartermaster, his little engineer, the man who loves him, launches himself with more than he thought was left in him, stumbling as he hurtles towards the door.

“Nothing,” he gasps, fingers clutching the grates. “Nothing, I told them nothing, James. I -”

He’s shoved back by the door itself and caught around the waist as he grasps for his agent. A swift blow to the side of his head spins the whole room around him. He doesn’t feel the second blow, but the room floods black.

Bond gets little time to keep struggling before a gag is shoved hard enough into his mouth to make him choke. He’s pushed into a cell just steps away and similarly incapacitated. He wonders, truly, why he feels so relieved. He is alive, certainly, but Q has suffered, the pain writ on his features clear as day, he has suffered and he has been hurt and tormented and starved and for what? For James’ stupid mission that he pursued for a dead leader.

Q didn’t sign up for this.

He never wanted to work in the field.

He wanted nothing to do with this, just his large screens and incredible gadgets and two cats waiting at home.

He never asked for this. And James thrust him right into the middle of it for his own selfish love of the man.

He moans, quiet and soft, and turns his head against the wall as though it will be enough to feel Q through it. For the ten days of being kept apart his heart hurts with the ache of parting like nothing else. He makes another sound, gentle, and hopes that even if Q can’t make them back, he hears them.

Bond doesn’t hear Q respond to him. He hears far uglier sounds instead. The door scraping open. Boots against hard floor. A slap, popping loud.

Q’s voice. His Q, his quartermaster, his partner sucking in a deep breath and coughing wet.

They demand answers that Q doesn’t have, that Q never had. He wasn’t meant to be so deep in this and the things they want to know are things that Q - bright and brilliant Q - couldn’t tell them even if he wanted to. He’s an engineer, he isn’t a spy. He works on computers, not in the field. Only low, groaning sobs, wracked from a weakened body, echo in answer to their questions. Only the muffled sound of blows follow.

Bond presses himself as close to the wall as he can, bound and exhausted and barely breathing through a damaged nose, since no air will come through the sweaty rag in his mouth. He presses close and closes his eyes and hopes, prays, that they stop, that they quit before Q does.

Why did he have to come here? Why did he have to take a plane he was terrified of to get to James? Why did he have to put his own life at risk for Bond’s stupid pride? He should be home with the cats, with Desmond purring warm against his legs, Peter stretched out beside. He should be sipping tea from his Scrabble mug as he paces the office in slippers. He should be waking sleepy as James calls him long distance to whisper that he misses him.

He shouldn’t be sobbing against a dusty floor. He shouldn’t be bleeding and crying and in pain. He should not wear bruises that are Bond’s to wear. He should not be terrified. 

This is what James tried so hard to keep him from, what he told himself would happen if he didn’t end it, and he didn’t end it. This is his fault. All of it.

There’s a dull thud and a sharp gasp and the sound of boots receding. The door slams from the cell behind him and there’s silence. Bond has been trained to assume the worst of any situation and respond, but when his mind reels to the worst now, he can’t respond. He can barely breathe. He seeks for a solution but his thoughts are deafened by the ringing silence between their rooms.

He saw him, and he was alive. And even then, bloodied and battered, Q spent his breath to tell him that he didn’t speak.

Bond’s breath cuts short when there is movement, rubbing rough from the cell beside. There’s a cough. He tries to call out but it’s muffled and useless and Q drags himself closer to the wall where he can hear his agent calling for him.

They don’t need words for that.

More’s better for it, Q allows, in a miserable way. For all he would give to hear James speak to him now, through the dull drone of pain in his head, through the spattering blood he leaves on the floor as he slinks closer to the wall, they’re listening. They’re watching. They will hear and note any word said between them.

Resting his brow against the cool brick, Q speaks instead of things that don’t exist. That maybe never will. He daubs a hand against his split lip when he smiles enough for it to bleed fresh.

“Chelsea, then,” Q murmurs. His eyes narrow when he smiles and he lets them close, imagining their captors taking down every foolish thing he says, every foolish thing he wants more than anything else in the world, every foolish thing they’ll never have. “With Turkish rugs on the floor, even though Desmond will be sick on them.”

James hums quietly, the most he can do, twisting his wrists over and over in the cuffs that hold him. He gently bangs his head back against the wall and stops only when Q hushes him.

“I’ll finally stop fiddling with the coffee maker.” Q’s voice travels muffled through the walls. “And it will finally work. Though you should be drinking tea like a normal Englishman, 007, it’s a disgrace.”

James sobs in lieu of a laugh and raises his eyes to the ceiling of his cell, pressing his fingers against the wall in a futile attempt to feel something that isn’t cold stone. They will get a hammock, a blasted huge and ridiculous thing to have in the garden. In summer they will curl on it, James dozing and Q reading as it sways beneath them and holds them up.

He wishes he could tell him.

He wishes he could ask Q to forgive him.

“You’ll have to forgive me, but I won’t fly again,” Q laughs. No, it isn’t a laugh, but his shoulders hitch and his throat tightens in much the same way. “The train to Paris instead, I think, to commemorate the first time. Every year after.” His brows knit and every part of him hurts and Q presses battered lips together to stop from sobbing.

No, not now. Not like this. Not with James listening.

“Every year,” he says again. “For many, many years.”

James eases his breathing, soothes it deliberately to hear Q’s match. Breath by breath, even as his eyes remain closed and tears soak into the gag in his mouth, he waits for Q to calm himself to stillness again. He will see him again. He will hold Q’s face in his hands and press their brows together and breathe him in. He will kiss him again, smile when he smiles too wide for the kiss to hold. He will wrap Q in his arms and promise him the world, and when they get to London he will give it to him.

He lets his heart ease and allows his body rest. For the time being, they will not be troubled again. Not until they are ready to be seen by the man who wants to see them. Not until their solitude is considered dull to watch.

He eases back, shifting so Q can hear where, so they can settle with a wall between them and sleep as they have so grown used to doing together, and he lets his heart speak for him with every beat.

_I’m sorry._

_I’ll save you._

_I love you, I love you, I love you._


	4. Integration Testing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He will find him._
> 
> _He will love him._
> 
> _He will._

When Q awakens, it is to the scrape of steel against the floor and strong hands beneath his arms. He doesn’t fight them. He doesn’t fight the way he’s tugged to standing unsteady or the way he’s half-dragged across the floor. He doesn’t fight the thought of a bullet cleanly ending him.

He goes, with as much dignity as he can in his uneven strides.

He goes because it is his duty to go.

He goes because he got to say goodbye, an unexpected blessing in an unfair world.

And he isn’t here at all, really. Q, who’s terrified of flying, isn’t in South Africa at all, being lead down a desolate hallway by ruffians. No, he’s going out for the morning paper. He likes to do the crossword while Bond sleeps late, covered in cats, finishing off a pot of tea before making another to be ready when his partner awakens.

It’s warm out, their neighborhood quiet. The sun appears in flashes through the clouds as humming halogen lights pass overhead. He’s in his slippers and a robe, but it doesn’t matter if the neighbours see. They’re friendly here, they know he and James both. They wave sometimes and say hello, rather than grunting in a language Q doesn’t speak.

And soon he’ll be back in bed.

And soon he’ll be laid snug against James’ chest.

And soon he’ll fall asleep with his pen slipping from his fingers, and the crossword unfinished.

He’s led into a small room and told to change, and for a moment he finds that all he can do is stare. The door is locked behind him and he continues to stare at the suit laid out on a mattress for him. It is absurd. It is beyond absurd and yet he knows he’s here, his skin aches and his bones hum in pain and he is certainly awake.

Perhaps their captor has a sick sense of humor.

Q is too tired to argue, too weak to protest so he changes.

It fits him, not as well as the suit James had bought him in Paris, but it fits him. He pats the jacket down against his thighs and turns when the door is open again. Same men as before. They gesture him to move and he goes, surprised when they let him walk on his own.

Through bright corridors adorned in sunlight, out of the holding cells and to something far nicer, until they enter a white wide room surrounded by windows, several chairs on the light wooden floor near a complicated set of screens and keyboards. Q resists going to see, he knows that isn’t for him, he’s had enough of being punched to want to sate his curiosity. He takes a seat in a chair instead, when gestured to.

Everything is white. From the chairs to the computers to the white furry cat that plays languid in the sun.

He wonders if he’s dreaming. It’s possible he is dreaming, hallucinating from pain and panic and exhaustion. The cat makes a sound, an unpleasant drawled mew common to the breed and Q looks away, up to the place before him where there rests a white chair, a man in a silver-grey suit already strapped into it.

Strapped.

Q blinks.

He doesn’t say his name. He doesn’t have to. A soft sigh of relief to see him again, at all, ever again is enough and Bond lifts his eyes. Pale blue, almost irridescent. They’re not close enough to touch but Q feels James’ hand around his waist anyway, hoisting him to the kitchen counter and nearly upsetting the pot of Earl Grey steeping beside. Q’s lips part.

Bond’s do, too.

 _Good morning_ , Q mouths to him, and despite it all, he sighs a single breath of laughter.

James watches him, closes one eye slowly before opening it again and directs his glance to the computers beside Q. It’s hardly a suggestion, he would not have Q endanger himself again, but he considers. If anything needs to be destroyed in this room in particular it will have to be that computer.

Or the blasted cat, that now jumps up on James’ lap and paws at his chest.

“Hate bloody cats,” he breathes, frowning at the animal.

He hears the voice before he hears the footsteps, and as he did in childhood, when the man went by a different name and was just as unpleasant then, James blocks out the nasally self-adoring tone that fills the room with words he doesn’t even care to hear. He makes out something about altering lives. Something about a breakthrough in technology. He watches Q and no one else, and sighs when the cat is removed from him and allowed to explore once more.

“Can we just get on with it?” James mutters, glaring at Blofeld who merely smiles, thin lips and narrowed eyes and absolutely nothing likeable about him even now. Cursed with being hated, James muses. Perhaps he had no choice but to be such a villain.

Q mutes his protest to a tight sound in his throat, too soft to be noticed, too faint to be heard above the whirr of mechanical arms and a tiny drill. It’s so small, surely it will break. It’s so frail, there’s no way that it can pierce dense bone. Bond’s expression is impassive, focused only on Q, but Q watches, as best he can without his glasses, and with dawning horror.

That isn’t how brains work. No. It isn’t how any computer works, organic or otherwise. One doesn’t simply pluck out what they like and assume the system holds. Everything, everything is tied together, functionality and display, performance and memory.

Memory, of protocols and policies and procedures.

Memory, of nicknames and favorite jumpers and whispered promises.

“You don’t,” Q whispers, “you don’t just -”

His fingers curl into the armrests and he grits his teeth as metal sings shrill against bone. Testing, he’s assured, they’re testing to find the right place. The bullet Q feared would be a blessing now, rather than to watch this atrocity. A swift end rather than an endless hell.

He’ll meet him again, he will.

They’ll fall in love, just like before.

That’s what it means, doesn’t it? To love another so intensely. That you would know them if you were deaf and blind and you would know them in another life and you would find them again, always. And Q’s stomach heaves and he swallows it down and he doesn’t let himself look away but he swears in silence that if they’re allowed to leave this place alive he will find him again.

He will find him.

He will love him.

He will.

The drill stops, the only sounds are Q’s hammering heart and James’ sounds of pain, gritted back behind bared teeth. His hands aren’t even free to hold the hand rests, they’re tied behind him, out of sight. For a moment, no one moves. Not James, not Q, not Blofeld. Then with a sigh, the man at the computer adjusts a calibration and it takes everything Q has not to move.

Because James looks at him and his eyes are so wide. Because he shakes his head so that Q doesn’t hurt himself again, not anymore. Not for him.

So Q stays still. He hates himself but he stays still as the drill hums again, shifts higher and penetrates delicate skin.

This time James screams, a sound Q has only ever heard before waking up in a cold sweat with warm hands to soothe him back again. It is not a sound a human being should make; it is not a sound he had hoped to ever hear James make. He forces himself to sit. If he interrupts the procedure now he will do him more damage, but come Hell or high water once that drill stops he will not sit idle anymore.

When the scream becomes a moan, when the screech of bone becomes a hum of machinery, Q pushes out of his chair. No one stops him, held at bay by Blofeld’s raised hand, but they watch, curious, as the quartermaster approaches his agent.

Q is too weak to do anything, he knows he is as much as they do. He’s never been strong. Never fast, never fierce. He wasn’t recruited for that. He wasn’t made quartermaster for it. It has always been his strength of mind that mattered more. It has always mattered more to have a ferocity of heart.

And that, Q has.

That, they can never take away.

Slender fingers stroke softly through wispy blonde hair, across a steady brow. Q’s fingers slip through the blood spilling dark from Bond’s temple. He cups his cheek the way he does every morning they’re together, every night when they lay in bed, spent with adoration of their other. Q closes his eyes and breathes in the familiar scent of him, heart speeding, and he rests their brows together.

His smile staggers and falters and falls.

“Remember me.”

His voice is barely audible. No one but Bond can hear. Q holds his breath and hopes. All he can do is hope. Ache and shiver thinking that Bond will still remember, that in the mornings they always linger in the kitchen together, touching and kissing and whispering sweet things. He can hope that James remembers how Q makes him laugh. How light Q feels in his arms when James hoists him over his shoulder.

It strikes Q suddenly that he never told James his name. That all he ever knew was the letter.

He makes a sound, gentle like a sob, painful like a blade, and bites his lip hard not to make another.

He feels a breath echoed against his cheeks and lets his eyes open. Bond’s eyes are dull but not bloodshot, they seek between Q’s eyes and his brow furrows. He blinks and tears slip down his cheeks and without thinking, Q wipes them with his thumb.

He doesn’t dare speak. He doesn’t dare try to voice all the love that swells in his chest. Even if he doesn't remember, even if Q is a stranger, he will help him. He will bring him home. He will fall in love with him again.

Always.

Q’s breath shivers as James blinks at him, as he continues to seek between his eyes.

“Remember me,” he whimpers, feeling himself start to tremble, stroking James’ face over and over. Beneath him, his agent swallows, groans, turns his face as though to look away and Q resolves to remind him - to spend the rest of his days reminding him.

Then warm lips touch his palm, press and hold, and stop Q’s breath.

“God, how could I forget you,” James whispers.

Q laughs, helpless, as from farther off in the room the command comes to recalibrate the machine.

“Kiss me,” Bond asks, and Q sobs, grinning, against his mouth.

“At your service, 007.”

Orders are given sharply, but Q can hardly hear it over the deafening rush that fills his ears when their mouths meet and their lips twist together. He kisses him. He kisses him as if he’ll never kiss him again, hands against his face, battered and bruised and beloved, each by the other, each always - always - by the other.

Q hardly hears the demand to take him away.

Q hardly hears the spinning of the drill to speed again.

But he hears, resounding and clear, when Bond whispers warmth against his ear:

“Take back your watch.”

And with a fiercer kiss, with no mind for split lips or propriety, Q leans hard against his agent and runs his hands down his arms. Fingertips snare against Bond’s wristwatch - the one Q made for James, himself, as Bond slept against his shoulder. It slips free and disappears into the too-large sleeve of Q’s suit the instant before hard hands find Q’s arms to drag him off.

He doesn’t look away from James even as he’s tugged back and forced to sit. He doesn’t look away from James even as his agent casts his eyes to the drill that hums so near. He doesn’t look down as his fingers turn the specific knob on the side of the watch to one minute.

He watches James.

He tastes his lips against his own. He thinks of winter mornings and coffee gone cold from how distracted they get with each other. He imagines the cats waiting for them at home. 

The watch vibrates gently in his hands.

So Q feigns a struggle, something small enough to pull attention but not hurt himself or Bond. Just enough. Just long enough. And then he ducks his head, strikes it back into the nose of his captor with a wet crunch, and Q jerks one hand free to toss the watch towards the computer and the man sitting behind it.

As if in slow motion, Q watches the cat startle backward from the watch and flee the room.

“Well,” he whispers. “That’s a relief, at least.”

And then, to Q’s momentary amazement before he’s thrown sideways from his chair, time speeds up all at once. The explosion rings his hearing to silence, and bodies scatter - most knocked flat, others thrown. Fire scalds the ceiling above and blackens the tiles and Q lands hard enough to be winded. Heat brings water to his eyes and he tries to blink it away, seeking towards the scuffle of movement he can see where Bond sat moments before. Shadows play against smoke, illuminated scarlet, like primal images of warriors before a roaring bonfire.

Fighting to protect one’s people.

Fighting to protect one’s home.

Fighting to protect one’s mate, and this the most savage drive of all.

With trembling fingers Q shoves himself upright and a bruising grasp around his ankle pulls him flat again. A dark shape skitters against his fingers, unyielding metal, and Q grabs the gun without thinking, without breathing, without anything more than instinct and demand that he not be taken again, that he not die in this place, that he protect Bond like Bond’s protecting him and Q turns the gun and fires three shots into the snarling, dark-haired man above him.

He blinks, throat jerking, and eyes wide.

The man drops to his knees and slumps motionless to the ground.

There’s blood on Q’s face and it isn’t his own. It belongs to the man who lays at his feet. It should be inside him, shouldn’t it? That and the fragments of bone and gore that Q saw punctured from the man by bullets that Q fired. He wonders who loved this man. He wonders who would miss him when he doesn’t come home.

Q can’t hear his own sobs but he can feel them, spasming through skinny shoulders and pulling bile up high into his throat.

A license to kill means knowing when to pull the trigger, and knowing when not to.

Sounds around come through as though he’s underwater. Muffled and slow, and Q blinks slowly at the man he’s killed, tries to take in air, but he’s drowning, his lungs are full and he’s drowning, the sound is dull and he’s drowning. And then there is a hand on his shoulder and Q turns quickly enough to dizzy himself, teeth bared in rage.

James sets a hand to his face and immediately pulls him close. His pristine suit is smeared in mess but he doesn’t care. He holds Q close and whispers things he can't hear. All Q can hear is the high hum of sound his ear produces and the muffled mumbling against him.

He lets himself be held.

He lets himself cling, curling his fingers hard enough to whiten his knuckles. 

He wails, until James’ hands soothe down his back and he pushes to stand, taking Q with him.

Q goes. There is fire, and chaos, and panic and gunshots and it’s all swallowed into the sea rushing into his ears and filling it with white noise. He stops them only long enough to turn to Bond and push the blood off his cheek, weeping against his mouth in a kiss that begs him to run. Begs him to go. Begs him to save leave Q and save himself.

He pleads with shaking hands and a wordless sob that they haven’t damaged him by drilling so deep, and when Bond snares Q around his waist and drags him out of the complex, Q doesn’t stop again.

How they get to the helicopter he doesn't know, why he doesn’t struggle, he doesn't know, all he knows is that they are airborne, his ears still ring and scream and he is crying, large hot tears slicking his cheeks as he rests his head back and trembles.

\---

The room he wakes in is white and Q immediately jerks to sit up, feeling the vertigo hit him and pull bile to his throat.

“Sir.”

The voice is unfamiliar, gentle and feminine, and although it still sounds as though he has cotton wool in his ears, Q can hear her.

“Sir, you're in the hospital.”

Q shakes his head and she produces, from the well-pressed white uniform she wears, a small card that shows on it the name of the hospital. Pressing dry tongue past dry lips, Q draws a sharp, shuddering breath and closes his eyes, shoving a palm against one.

“I can hear you,” he whispers, throat rasping dry. “Mostly, I can -”

“That’s very good,” she says, and when she rests a hand on his shoulder to guide him back to bed, Q doesn’t fight it.

He looks to his hand to seek out the blood smeared on it and finds nothing. But he feels it, dripping hot like tears down his cheeks. He tastes it thick and briny on his tongue. Perhaps his ribs were broken, perhaps the days and days of torture, starvation, torment, pain have wounded him, because he can’t seem to fill his lungs.

When his eyes close, he sees the way blood trickled from his lover’s temple, and framed his jaw. When he heaves a sob, he hears the whirr of a drill and deafening gunfire.

“Get yourself together,” he whispers, grateful his own voice is only a susurrus of wind across his lips. Caught between speech and thought, one in the same, Q reminds himself that he needs you, he needs you, he needed you and you failed. He needs you now and you’re failing. He’ll need you again to fix what they’ve done to him and you’re a failure. You can’t.

“I can’t.”

You never could.

“I couldn’t -”

“Q.”

This voice he knows, and Q brings both hands to his face to press the tears away. A familiar rough hand presses to his cheek and Q makes a pitiful sound as he turns to it.

“I’m sorry -”

“Hush, stay still,” James whispers, and the bed dips as he, with a groan, settles against it. “We’re here. You're safe.”

Q curls around his hand, grasping it with slender fingers and bending his body to coil around where Bond sits. He strokes his dark, soft curls, and bends to kiss them, drawing his nose against his quartermaster’s temple. Q’s sobs are enough to shake the bed beneath them, and he tries to sit up but James catches him by skinny shoulders and lays him slowly to the bed again.

The fingers that seek against his cheek are cool, trembling, searching for familiarity and Bond turns a kiss against them.

“I’m fine,” he tells him. “I’m fine, I promise.”

“They -” Q gulps down a breath hard enough that it wracks him into a cough, speaking only again when the pressure in his chest eases. “They tried to take you from me. Your head, your mind, I - I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have - ”

“Nothing,” James whispers. “No one could have me forget you.”

“You wouldn’t have had control. The mind isn’t a singular thing, there are consequences to damaging part of it. You cannot turn one segment or another and expect the rest to stay the same -”

“Darling -”

“- it doesn't - doesn’t work like that -”

James ducks his head and kisses him, deep and slow and lingering, enough to feel Q shiver against him, enough to feel his hand seek over his neck to hug. James sinks to his knees on the ground and strokes Q’s hair, touches him, tries to soothe him.

“I’m here,” he breathes. “All of me, I’m here, I’m yours, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Q is certain he’s dreaming. No, he’s certain he died there, far from home, and that perhaps his loyalty to duty was enough to bring him to the heaven he’s never believed in. It could be this, white walls and vibrant sun, a soft bed and James. James for whom Q took another’s life. James for whom Q gladly gave his life to know he’s safe. James who he got to kiss again - one last time - before it ended.

He doesn’t remember the bullet that rebooted him, but he remembers how James kisses him. Bottom lip caught between Q’s own, noses pressed to the other’s cheek. Hands in the other’s hair and Q kisses him harder, deeper, whimpering against his kiss because if he’s at all earned heaven he wants it to feel like this forever.

Always.

Kiss upon kiss, until Q grows weak. The morphine running through him soothes him to rest and he fights it, clinging to James until he climbs into bed with him, wrapping his arms around his exhausted quartermaster and holding him still.

Q sleeps.

James doesn’t. 

When Q wakes again, he is calmer. Against his palm is a familiar heart and the breath that rises and falls slowly beside him he knows. For a long time he does nothing but rest and listen, curling his fingers against the rough fabric of the hospital tunic that James wears. Then rough hands spread against his back and Q knows he’s awake.

“It shouldn't be so frightening, should it?” He mumbles. “Seeing someone die from a bullet you sent at them? It's a death by proxy, really. I didn't even load it. It wasn't even my gun.”

Bond nestles closer, their bodies curved together, IVs free to drape over the side of the bed but otherwise he keeps Q held warm against him. He touches a kiss to the knobby bone at the base of his neck. He lifts his nose to silken curls and breathes warmth into them.

Bond kills people for a living. He lost track, long ago, of how many and by what means. Each life he’s caused to end has diminished in its impact, from the first time it happened and he was sick on his own shoes, until now when it’s another day at the office. And he hates it. He hates that he can take lives and not think twice of them.

And he hates most that Q knows now, viscerally, the ugliness of that act. Even in self-defense. Even in extraordinary circumstances. Even if it saved his life, it is a weight that one carries and if he could add it to the tally of his own sins he would.

The arm on which Q rests lifts and he sweeps his hand across his brow, gathering his quartermaster’s curls between his fingers.

“Sometimes a trigger has to be pulled,” James tells him, and Q’s breath hitches once before easing again.

It is hardly a comfort. It was hardly a comfort to James the first time either. All he can do is hold him closer, kiss him, remind him that no matter the horrors, they are together. That will not change.

“I killed a man,” Q says, humming after, as though saying it aloud takes some weight off his shoulders. James says nothing. He strokes gently against his stomach and chest, soothing him, over and over. 

“I want to go home,” Q adds softly, and James presses a kiss to the side of his face before he gently extricates himself from his quartermaster who lays still. He goes to make the request, not taking no for an answer.

\---

They’re given a regimen, heard but hardly minded. They’re cautioned against physical activity, Bond in particular, whose response is a patient smile that makes the attending nurse blush. Potential complications and warning signs, medication against infection, recommended allowances for time to recover that goes only so far as a dry, fleeting look between both men before they’re signed out and gone.

Q clutches his bag to his chest, the same overnighter he brought with him to Austria - recovered by the MI6 agents who swept in behind them. Moneypenny brought it to the hospital, with some of the other clothes Q keeps in his office, and the hoodie into which he’s now all but swallowed. In the private car, he can hardly settle, slouching in his seat to peek above the window, jiggling a leg. He’s bruised still, tired, his ears ring and he knows that will likely never go away, but he tells himself that James must have the same distortion - must have had it for years - and that makes him feel a little better.

And a little worse.

Both, really, which seems to be the way of things right now.

“I feel naked,” Q remarks, fingernail picking against a seam on his bag with repetitive scrapes.

“Already?”

Q snorts, and winces a little at the sensation. “I destroyed my computer there. Austria. Snapped the screen back and shoved it into the sink. Hopeless to recover, and if by some miracle they got it turned on again, they’d lock themselves out before they even had a chance to crack it.”

Bond reaches out to take Q’s hand, holding it while they’re driven home. In truth, he hurts. Everywhere. In more than just his body. His heart aches that he put Q through this. That he had to discover what it feels like to kill, that he has to know how it feels to suffer and not know the information that could make it stop.

It is his fault.

Forever it will be upon his head.

The stop the car several blocks from the house and wait for the car to turn and leave before walking home. Bond sets a hand to the back of Q’s neck, stroking and rubbing there until his quartermaster smiles. That, at least, it a relief. That he still can. That he still does.

Q unlocks the house, the key turns, and both cats greet them at the door, pawing and stretching and mewling their welcome. Q sets his bag to the floor and crouches, then kneels, then sits back stiffly on the ground as James shuts the door behind them and the security systems beep and snap into place. Desmond is first into Q’s lap, vibrating little chirps and butting his head against Q’s chin. Even Peter rubs the length of his little body against Q’s side before twining around Bond’s legs and lifting his paws to his leg to stretch against him.

“God,” Q whispers, a laugh tugging sharp in him as he slips his arms around the fluffy beast in his lap, who hardly minds the squeeze. “God, we’re home, aren’t we?”

Bond meets his gaze and they share an unsteady but strengthening smile, before Q discreetly sweeps a hand across his eye and hushes the eager cat who stands now on his hind legs, paws on Q’s shoulder to snuffle into his hair. Q’s tremors haven’t stopped, and depending on how his physical therapy fares, they might never stop. He’s okay with that. He’s okay with the nightmares that so far only morphine have kept at bay. He’s okay with the hearing loss and the computer loss and everything else they lost because they didn’t lose it all and now they’re home.

They’re home.

They’re home and whole and together and Q rubs his bruised cheek against Desmond’s shoulder, scratching softly through his fur.

“I’d have died for you,” Q says, simply, softly, with little more strain that a single crease in his brow. “Were it a trade, if they had asked -”

“Q.”

“I would have, gladly. But were it not even - you know, me for you - I’d not have left without you. I wouldn’t have left you there. And I knew, when you were in that machine, that nothing they could do would change that. If you did forget me. Home. Your life before. If they damaged motor cortexes or speech centers, any part of you that they might have taken, I would mourn, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. If I got to spend the rest of my life caring for you, in any capacity,” he says, shaking his head as their eyes meet, “then I’d not want for anything else.”

Desmond slips free from his arms, and Q watches the cat slide sleekly over his shoulder.

“I just wanted you to know that,” Q murmurs, and with a grimace, he begins working his way slowly up from the ground again. “I should put on tea.”

James watches him, brows furrowed, before taking up their bags and bringing them upstairs. He sets them down and considers the bed, still made and comfortable, calling to them to climb in and rest. 

Against his leg, Peter paws and mews, a softer sound than usual, as though he knew that they had been missing for dangerous reasons. Bond bends and gathers the little cat against his chest, buries his face in the silken black fur. He feels a prickling behind his eyes and laughs, forcing the sound free before holding Peter at arm’s length with one hand, paws dangling.

“Awful thing,” he coos, watching the little cat splay and coil his little paws over and over, eyes closing in pleasure as he vibrates with purr. “I didn't miss you at all,” he whispers, gathering the cat to him again as he heads downstairs, coming up behind Q to kiss his cheek.

Q manages a small smile, turning just enough to watch Bond over his shoulder. He stands with one foot atop the other, two mugs set with tea bags before him, the kettle warming. His knuckles are white where he rests his hands against the counter.

“You should rest,” he says.

“We will. All four of us, I imagine, once tea is done.”

Q holds up three fingers, with a rueful smile, and Bond shifts Peter to one arm, little claws pricking through his sleeve where he kneads. The agent’s other arm circles his quartermaster’s narrow waist. He breathes warmth against his temple.

“Please, Q.”

“I need to check the house,” Q answers. “Run through security footage, check any pings that hit my network. I need to go to HQ and take out a new computer. M will want to see me, sooner rather than later, I’m sure of it. There will be - there’ll be missing equipment reports to file, a field report, which I’ve never done. I need to meet with Branch and - and I need new glasses. I need -”

He stops, suddenly, with only a single hitched breath and a concentrated sigh.

James bends to let Peter slip liquid to the floor before enveloping Q with both his arms, careful not to squeeze any injured areas. He sets his chin against Q’s shoulder and nuzzles him softly as he speaks.

“I’ll check the house with you,” he says. “You can wait a day without a new computer, and I’m sure you have another in the house you can use in the meantime should your hands shake without it. M knows what happened, he came to see us in the hospital but you were exhausted. He’s cleared our leave. As for the reports, leave them until we go to headquarters -”

“But -”

“You need to rest,” James repeats, gently emphasizing the words. He reaches to take up the kettle as it begins to whistle. “You need to come upstairs with me and sleep in your own bed, with your cats, in a place you know is safe and yours.”

Q folds his arms over James’ around him, squeezing himself more securely back against Bond’s chest. He lifts a hand as his agent fills their mugs, and watches the ripples of movement shake subtle but ceaseless through his fingers.

“My hands are already shaking,” he laughs, just a breath - and a rueful one - but there all the same. “They said it might stop with time. Physical therapy. They also said it might not. Going to have a hell of a time making new devices for you to break if it keeps up.”

Bond sets the kettle down and gathers Q’s fingers to his mouth, holding them firmly, kissing them gently.

“Figures you’d manage a way to make it even harder for me,” Q snorts, before he turns and slips his arms around James’ neck. His breath spreads heat against the curve of Bond’s neck where he buries himself, with little mind for injury, with little mind for anything but pressing into the security he can only find in his agent’s embrace. “How do you do it?”

“Make your life inordinately difficult?”

“I can answer that. It’ll be a paramount part of my report,” Q murmurs. “Prat.”

Bond just smiles, turning his nose against Q’s temple to breathe him in, to soothe him and nuzzle him and get comfortable with being so close again. He doesn’t know how to answer him. He doesn’t know what to say regarding taking a life and living with it. He doesn’t know. For so many years he has done this without issue yet he still wakes up from nightmares where men he has killed, seemingly faceless at the time, would tug him down into the scenario they had found themselves and take him instead.

Time and again he wakes in a cold sweat knowing that when he dies, he will meet those he had taken from life unfairly. He wakes in terror that he will take more and more lives and not regret it, not fear it.

That, in truth, terrifies him the most.

The fact that he will take a life to save Q, to save this home, to save the life they have together... that he does not regret, that he will do without a qualm. The rest? The rest is shameful indifference.

“I think you have spare glasses by the bed,” James tells him. “In the second drawer down.”

His answer makes Q smile enough that he ducks his head and turns his fingers against his cheek to ease away the strain of it. That’s how he does it, this remarkable and brave man. That’s how he copes with mission after mission. Job after job. Horror after bloody horror.

“I’d forgotten about those,” Q says, extending his fingers to James’ cheek instead of his own. He leans in to brush their lips together, before their kiss is interrupted by a mewl, and Q laughs, eyes closed. “You take the tea, and I’ll take the lads.”

One gathers themselves together and carries on, and takes comfort whenever they can.


	5. Refactoring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Q,” James interjects, and whatever it is in how he says it - the soft tone, the darting eyes, the raise of his shoulders - Q stops. “I need you to do me a favor.”_
> 
> _Q’s throat clicks with how hard he swallows._

They don’t see each other at work much anymore. It’s hardly for any reason beyond the fact that they are immersed in their own projects and haven’t the time, as before, to seek the other out. Q had not needed to file a field report, having not voluntarily gone into the field. He retold his experiences to the Branch psychologist and the report was taken from that. He has been granted unlimited access to subsidized therapy.

Bond spent a long time filing his own paperwork, in long meetings with M regarding Spectre and Blofeld. Enough teams had been sent to confirm actual death yet neither M nor Bond wanted to leave that to chance, as last time it proved entirely ineffective. He takes as much time as he can to eat, simply because he knows Q will give him hell if he doesn’t, but beyond that, he and his quartermaster see each other at home.

Peter has grown accustomed to perching on James’ shoulder as he works in the kitchen, and though the agent complains bitterly about the animal, he never attempts to unsettle him. He even goes so far as to support his bottom - unnecessarily, Q has pointed out - when he turns so the cat doesn’t lose his balance and fall.

Five quick, concurrent beeps. A metallic snap. One long tone. The tumbling of a cylinder around a key.

Those are the sounds it takes for Bond’s heart to beat a little faster.

“Good evening, Desmond. How was your day?”

Q leans back against the door to close it, finding the locks behind himself and closing them again. He listens to Desmond as he chirps and trills about his day - acknowledged by Q in little hums of agreement - and Q turns to check the locks a second time. Finally, he crouches to unlace his Oxfords.

“A starling, you say? On the windowsill?”

Bond’s smile widens.

“Well,” Q answers his cat, standing to toe off his shoes. “I’m grateful you startled him off before he could make a mess of things. Thank you, Desmond.”

He checks the locks a third time before making his way to the kitchen, cat between his legs.

Peter makes a delighted sound of greeting but makes absolutely no attempt to climb off his perch as James turns something in the pan and adjusts the temperature beneath it. He hums when warm arms wrap around his middle and his other shoulder is occupied by the chin and smiling face of his quartermaster.

“You smell like that grease you put on bicycle wheels to make them turn,” James tells him.

“You smell like cat,” Q replies. Bond hums his displeasure at the revelation and tilts his head against Q’s.

“I suppose this calls for an immediate shower,” he muses. “And to save water we should perhaps share it.”

“And distract you from making dinner? I’d not dream of it.”

“Nor would you dream of making it yourself.”

“I’m very capable with a kettle and a cup of pot noodle, thank you,” Q tells him, giving Peter a stroke along his back and Bond a kiss against his shoulder. “Polytetrafluoroethylene.”

Bond blinks, and his eyes narrow over his shoulder in amusement. “Bless you.”

“That’s what you smell on my hands,” Q grins, bringing his fingers to his nose. “And my hair. Probably everything else as well. You’ll be discomforted to know it’s the same thing that’s stopping that salmon from burning despite your best efforts.”

“No gratitude,” Bond laments. “None at all.”

He flakes off a piece of fish with his spatula and with careful fingers passes it to the cat on his shoulder. Q snorts and James turns his head enough to kiss his hair, nuzzling him away to get changed into something that isn’t work-drenched and heavy.

They have dinner on the terrace, feet up and a cat in each of their laps. Wine on the table, the bottle getting slowly and deliberately emptier. They don’t talk much. They don’t need to. Q sneaks James’ salad from his plate when he doesn’t eat it. James pretends to not be feeding parts of his dinner to the cat in his lap.

The passion that burned hot between them before Bond’s last assignment has not died, but rather seems to have changed its shape. What was frantic and furious, driven by a near fearfulness of when James’ next mission would come down the line, now settles into steady warmth. They no longer rage, rage against the dying of the light. They revel instead in each and every evening they get to watch the sun set together.

“You’re going to hear it from him when you go back in,” Q points out, adjusting his socked feet to slip beneath Bond’s legs.

“M knows how to reach me if he’s got something to say.”

“Not him,” Q muses against his glass. “Peter.”

James snorts, ducking his head to see the slinky feline purring contentedly against him, paws still mashing at a constant relaxed rate. Over and over, open-toes, closed-toes, claws out and in yet never leaving a mark or hurting.

“What is he doing?” James mumbles. “He’s been doing that so bloody often lately.”

Q thumbs against his bottom lip, brow tilting upward as he says, with a vast, wry pleasure, “He’s milking you, 007. I’d hesitate to call it a success just yet, but he seems comfortably dedicated to the pursuit.”

James stops moving entirely for a moment, eyes wide and lips very slowly parting before he sets his wineglass to the table and takes the little cat in both hands. Peter protests immediately, a whining mewl and stretched feet indicating he wants to be put right back to his lap thank you very much, sir. James hesitates in acquiescing.

“Q,” he murmurs. “Explain, please. Layman’s terms.”

Q laughs, both brows raised now. “I thought you said you had cats.”

“I had one, once, and I hated her.”

“But surely -”

“Q.”

His quartermaster settles back, thumb slipping against his fingertips in a gentle movement to ease the lingering tremors in them. He bites his bottom lip and grins, releasing it with a patient, delighted sigh. “I wasn’t aware this was going to become a biology lesson, but I’m a little alarmed that you need one. It’s how kittens press milk from their mother’s teat, Bond.”

“Oh, God,” James breathes.

“It isn’t going to work, obviously. They do it for comfort,” Q shrugs, lifting his glass to his lips again. “When they feel safe and protected as they did when they were small. It’s quite a compliment, really. Little bugger’s never done it for me. You should be flattered.”

“Charming,” James mutters, glaring at the cat who reaches out to try to splay his little feet against his nose, mouth open on another demanding yowl. With a deep sigh, James grudgingly sets the cat back to his lap, where Peter immediately settles and begins his contented mashing once more. Bond doesn’t ask again, and he doesn’t look at Q when he watches him, eyes deliberately slipping to his lap and back up again.

It’s late by the time they go to bed, and both cats inevitably follow them, despite Bond’s habit of leaving either or both in the kitchen. He watches Q check and recheck the locks, arm the outside cameras and run his hands over the door again before finally clicking off the light and moving to go upstairs.

The fever is gone from their passion, but the adoration, the admiration and respect never will. Bond shifts to lay on his side against his quartermaster as the man reads, sitting up in bed with his glasses partway down his nose. Slowly, and it always starts slowly - anything silly, anything new - he presses his knuckles down against Q’s side and splays his fingers again.

“Bond.”

“Q.”

“What are you doing?”

“Reliving my kittenhood.”

Q’s nose wrinkles, and he lifts a prim finger to slip his glasses higher up his nose again. “That’s dreadful, 007. And incorrect.”

“Incorrect?” James asks, spreading his hand across Q’s bare stomach, and curling his fingers closed again.

“You’ve never been a kitten. More like a rambunctious puppy, scarcely housebroken and prone to destroying furniture. Or lasers.”

“Especially lasers,” Bond agrees. Q lifts his elbow, book held aloft, as James slips beneath his arm and nuzzles his chest. “Does that mean -”

“Don’t.”

“- that I should -”

“Please, don’t.”

“- lick you, instead?”

“007,” Q exclaims, clapping his book closed, and frowning as he realizes he’s lost his page. “I’ve managed - with aplomb, I think - to handle any number of situations you’ve thrown at me or thrown me into, but whatever this fetish is that you’re discovering is better suited for the psychologist than...”

James curls his fingers, just against Q’s ribs, and he yelps.

“Holy shit -”

He barely has time to drop his book before the merciless tickling begins, fingers and lips and warm soft stubble, against his neck and at his sides and under his arms until Q is shrieking in laughter and James lies atop him kissing behind his ear, laughing warm with him. He grants him mercy only when Q makes that weak little sound meaning his limit is almost reached, though his laughter doesn’t ebb.

“I love you,” James murmurs against him, stroking Q’s hair from his face and gently removing his glasses to put away. 

“No you don’t, you’re bloody dreadful,” Q giggles.

Bond just hums and grabs Q by the waist to yank him further down the bed, laying heavy atop him entirely. Beneath him, Q settles - truly settles, held safe by the comforting weight of his agent above him. He doesn’t fret about checking the security system again, just one more time, just twice more, three times, on and on. He doesn’t worry that he’ll find himself sleepless again, or worse, woken by nightmares.

He is held. He is protected. He is loved and he gets to love and protect and hold in return.

Even if his agent is a terror.

Fluttering fingers settle to scruffy cheeks, and Q bends their mouths together. Sweeping softly, each ebb and flow of their lips pulls their kiss deeper. Q disentangles his foot from the sheets and slides his heel against the back of James’ ankle, levering his hips upward to make his interest known.

Slowly, slowly Q’s assertive dominance in bed returned. For weeks he resisted any intimacy, accepting touches and kisses and squirming from more, but as the time passed, so his desire renewed. To control and demand, to playfully push for James to bend for him. Bond had been delighted, happy to nuzzle against Q’s stomach as his quartermaster had held his tie like a leash and murmured commands down against his hair.

Bond rocks downwards, letting his hands slip to curl against Q’s shoulders, his head duck to press against his collarbone as his lips kiss his heartbeat. Slow and deliberate, rubbing until both are breathless with need, hands in sweaty hair, legs tangled and cocks hard against each other.

James chases the little rivulets of sweat that slide down Q’s jaw, over his throat. He kisses against small peaked nipples and savors Q’s moans and whimpers of pleasure. He slips a hand between them and teases fingers against Q’s hole until Q squirms higher up the bed and shoves James down by his shoulders to where he wants him.

Q settles his legs over Bond’s shoulders, his skinny hips held high, and when Bond’s mouth presses against him, the world fades away but for them. He arches to his shoulders, shaking fingers snaring the headboard and James’ hair in turn. Moans sharply puncture every shortened sigh, driven from him by heat and pressure and slick sucking sounds as Bond’s mouth works miracles to ease the strain Q has come to accept will never go away but in moments like this.

Licked open, sucked scarlet, and spread shaking, Q is liquid in Bond’s capable, calloused hands as he’s turned to his stomach. He shivers, watching over his shoulder, when his agent smears the spit from his lips with the back of his hand. Q laughs into the pillow beneath and presents his hips higher, reaching behind himself to grab Bond’s hair when he leans atop him and mounts him hard.

They will exhaust themselves this way, their bodies spent and their hearts in turn, with every whispered proclamation of love or plea for _more, harder, yes, like that - oh_ that spills from kiss-swollen lips. Q asked the psychologist once, only once, if his libido would return, and her answer was indefinite. He’ll gladly cope with a bit of the shakes now and then to have kept this instead.

James finishes first, with a moan and a worship of Q’s name, soft against his skin, a single letter dragged out as though it’s got the whole world in its syllable. It doesn’t take long for Q to follow him over. He’s dozing by the time James finishes cleaning him up, kissing down the length of his spine as he wipes between his legs.

He tells Q he loves him.

\---

Q doesn’t see Bond in the morning, nothing but a note on the bedside table telling him that he had to leave early.

_Another with M, you know what that means. x_

There is tea in the plunger - brewed leaves, because Q likes a stronger tea than the bags can offer. It’s still hot when he finds it, with another note beside that makes Q snort and crumple it in his hand, finding a mug to pour his morning wake-up into. The cats are fed. Their water is changed. The curtains are drawn just enough to show the day but not enough to show the home. Q leans against the counter and wonders, again, if he isn’t dreaming and if this isn’t his own funny version of heaven.

He leaves when the car comes to pick him up, upon James’ insistence that he have a driver if he refuses to drive in London. He spends the entire way to work trying to temper his smile.

James waits as long as he can, which, in truth, is not long at all. At just past ten in the morning, he makes his way through Headquarters to find someone to take him on the damn boat over to Q Division. He fidgets. He frowns when the minion powering the boat gives him a look and the man turns away. By the time they dock, James’ hands are shaking and all he can do is shove them into his pockets, fiddling with the keys and odds and ends in there.

His shoes click loudly on the way through the security checks and into the Division properly. Few people look up. It’s not uncommon for agents to come by to look at what they have to work with before they’re sent on assignment, and 007 is a common sight. It makes this part easier, at least.

He finds Q at his desk, as always. Buried beneath schematics and blueprints, he's working on something half-made and mysteriously small. Three malachite beads on a well-worn string - the gift James brought him back from their first date in Turkey - work slowly between his fingers. There is soldering iron a little too close to a half-open book. The title is in French and James can see his own handwriting on the Post-It notes stuck in the pages, where Q had asked him to translate. His heart beats a bit too quickly. He stops in front of Q’s desk as a boy would before his headmaster, and despite all his charm and wit and practice, awkwardly clears his throat for his quartermaster to look up.

Q nearly drops his pencil.

“You mustn’t sneak up on me like that,” he murmurs, rueful but smiling, eyes narrowed.

“I’ve been standing here.”

“I’m glad you are. Not glad you startled me, but I need your help with something.” Q pauses, leaning back and setting the worry-beads to his desk. “I’m glad you’re here anyway,” he clarifies, with a secret smile, “but I need your ears.”

Bond tilts his head. “Beg pardon.”

“I’ve been working on something,” he grins, setting his thumb to the corner of his teeth. “Imagine earmuffs - noise canceling - you can wear inside your ear. Strong enough to muffle loud, sudden noises, but capable still of letting through whispers and amplifying them. Recording them. The damage to your ears is done already,” he says, then tilts a crooked frown. “Mine too, what with the bloody ringing, but I suppose I’d not thought that you’d lived with it for so long, so I thought for the next agents they bring through, you know? Let me show you -”

James knows this revving sound of Q’s motor all too well, and his heart’s beating far too quickly to even listen. “Q,” he interjects, and whatever it is in how he says it - the soft tone, the darting eyes, the raise of his shoulders - Q stops. “I need you to do me a favor.”

Q’s throat clicks with how hard he swallows.

From his pocket, Bond produces a man’s ring, polished sleek and black as hematite. It sits heavy in Q’s palm as he takes it, warmed by James’ body, and Q turns it over carefully in his unsteady fingers. Another, like the first that was handed to him in Austria, but smoother. Lovelier, if Q lets himself think that, about something that invariably will result in reports and meetings and paperwork and assignments. Bond’s assignment, back out again, and so soon, so very soon. It’s a credit to Q’s training that he doesn’t make a sound, breathing deep instead. It’s a credit them both that he manages a supportive smile and a nod.

“Looks like titanium,” Q says. “The other one, you could see where they’d embedded data in it, like the grooves of a vinyl record, but this one’s clean. At least on the surface,” he murmurs, turning away and lifting it towards the light. “They’ve gotten smarter already, the bastards. You’ll have to give me a bit, I’m afraid. It’ll need to go through a few different sorts of imaging to see if we can crack it, though I’ve a sinking feeling we might need to _actually_ crack it -”

“Q, it’s a bloody engagement ring,” James sighs, exasperated, and when Q looks at him again his cheeks are red with the sweetest embarrassment, and his lips are pursed hiding a smile. James swallows, and Q realizes he isn’t breathing. 

“Beg pardon?” He whispers.

“It is not embedded with information,” Bond tells him. “It isn’t dangerous. And for God’s sake don't actually crack it, I had it made to your size.”

A moment, two, and James lowers his eyes to his confused partner, standing with jaw slack and ring held against his palm. He is so lovely. A genius, truly, but sometimes so very, very naive. The agent swallows again, keenly aware now that anyone in the radius of the desk is listening to them, and walks with clipped steps around the desk to face Q properly.

“Darling, please say something. I’ve been sweating bloody bullets since I picked it up from the jewelers this morning.”

Q laughs, a breathless and high sound, and folds the ring over and over in his hand. He is aware how hot his cheeks are, so many people are watching, and in knowing that he straightens his shoulders and lifts his chin.

“You never quite specified your intention, 007,” he tells James honestly.

With a soft curse and a hand through his hair, tugging silvered blonde strands out of place, his agent steps just a little closer and allows his body to bend, one knee to the ground the other up for balance.

“Git,” James sighs, lifting his eyes to his quartermaster. “Q, will you marry me?”

Q’s nose - scarlet across the bridge now, and blossoming bright across his cheeks - wrinkles as his smile spreads. Bottom lip bitten between his teeth, he feels so silly, as he nods, he feels so absurd, like schoolboys playing at what they’ve seen adults do in films. He nods, though, quickly, gently, he nods and laughs.

“Yes,” he says, clearing his throat. “Yes, I think I will.”

Yes he says to the man who doesn’t exist to the outside world, yes he says to a relationship that should never have been. Yes to himself and yes to them and yes to what is theirs to keep, a home and a life and their own peculiar little family. It wasn’t meant to be theirs, such a simple, profound moment as this. They weren’t meant to fall in love, let alone with each other, but there’s no one in the world for whom they’d rather spend their lives caring.

The ring is warm around his finger, glistening black as oil, beautiful in its simplicity. Q blinks at it a moment, laid here against his slender fingers, distracted only by the polite applause of his minions around them.

“Sod off,” he mutters at them, before folding his hands at the back of James’ neck. “And you, up off the floor. You’re going to hurt your back.”

“Always a romantic, my quartermaster.”

Q laughs, suddenly and brightly, as James stands and Q’s arms settle looped over his shoulders. “Should probably tell you who you’re actually marrying, shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, I am well aware,’ James tells him. “Smart and stubborn, a compulsive tea drinker, a cat person - upon my bloody head - and a man who steals the covers.”

“Quinlan,” Q tells him, laughing as he strokes James’ hair, and it feels so strange to say it again, a name he had promised to forgo for a letter. “Quinn.”

James grins. “No.”

“Oh yes. Terribly convenient, really. I half-suspect it’s why they recruited me in the first place.”

Another laugh and James’ eyes narrow as he smiles wider. “Irish.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I love you,” James whispers, “so much.”

It will be mere minutes before word travels, already flowing from fingers to intranet messaging. Mere minutes before word reaches M. Mere minutes before they’re both called to task and right now, in this moment, Q just laughs. Nudging Bond’s nose with his own, he laughs and kisses him soundly, fingers in his hair, and lifted to his toes. He kisses James, for whom he would sacrifice anything in the world to keep safe, James to whom he has already dedicated his life and career and everything in-between, James who grumbles in the morning and keeps him up at night and is kind to his cats and who loves him.

“I love you too,” Q whispers, grinning before he glances over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Back to work, you lot.”

There is a shuffling that indicates immediate compliance, and quicker hands on the keyboard. Q wonders what they’re even saying and then realizes he doesn't care. He doesn't care because he has this and he has James and nothing else matters.

Soft lips brush his again and he grins.

“And you, too.”

“I quit,” James whispers.

Q’s brows knit, searching between Bond’s eyes, taking in the pleasure and sobriety that line his features. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I quit,” James tells him again. “Retirement. No more missions, no more field work. I’m going to sit around all day with your cats -”

“Our cats.”

“- with our cats and laze about and get fat,” he says, and Q shakes his head.

“I don’t - I’m not certain you can just _do_ that, Bond.”

“Get fat? Oh, you wait and see. Nothing but sweets and puddings from here on out.”

Q laughs despite himself, the sound a little too tight, a little too high. He wraps his arms firmer in hopes it eases the trembling in them, in his shoulders, all down the length of his body in coursing ripples of disbelief. Bond surprising him with a bloody engagement was enough, but this - real safety, real quiet - is more than Q ever truly let himself hope might happen.

His laughter becomes a shortened breath. The next shortened breath tugs heat to his eyes. He would never have asked this of him but he has to ask, “Do you mean it?”

Bond ducks his head, enough to rub their noses gently together, again and again, eyes closed and hands moving to slip into Q - Quinn's - hair. 

“I finished the paperwork this morning,” he says, smiling when he feels tears slick against his face too as Q stifles a sob. “All official and guilt-free. M signed off on them and the rest is payroll and waiting. An official release and pomp but the rest is done, Quinn, I’m done, I have a life to live.”

“With me,” Q asks, and his voice sounds so very little that he has to laugh at James’ ability, always, to weaken his unbreakable stride.

“With you.”

“God,” sighs Q, breathing out hard, focused, as he’s dizzied by the thought of it. James’ kisses bring warmth to his cheeks and he strokes his agent’s hair -

No, not his agent.

His husband.

Nothing more, and nothing less.

No more nights staring at a black screen hoping for word to make him breathe again. No more new scars to learn. No more stress and suffering and no more 007. Only Bond.

James Bond.

“I’m going to miss the stripteases over coms,” Q murmurs, grinning wide.

“Darling, I could come here to give you live shows but I fear it would upset the minions.”

“Please do that!” The voice is a few tables over and muffled and James snorts, shaking his head.

“I can’t convince you to play hooky, can I?”

“Why?”

“Figured we should get as much paperwork done in one day as we can,” James tells him, corners of his eyes wrinkling in delight. “I know how you love official documents.”

“I do but that’s hardly the - _now_? You want to go now?”

“Right now.”

“Right now,” Q echoes, shaking his head, nodding. He doesn’t know anymore and a part of him wants to cry, overcome, but that part of him is quickly withheld behind a stiff upper lip and a creased brow. In a matter of moments, they’ve secured a life together, altered everything, built it stronger. Q draws a breath to protest the hurry but James steals his words with a kiss and a murmur.

“Don’t make me carry you out of here, because you know I will,” James tells him, pressing their cheeks together, his whisper low and pleased against Q’s ear. “Retirement was enough to navigate. I may have forgotten to mention the rest of this to M in our meeting.”

“He’s going to have kittens when he finds out,” groans Q against his cheek.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” James tells him, and he sounds delighted by the thought. He kisses Q again, cupping his cheeks, stroking his throat, holding him close. This is spontaneous and crazy and wonderful. The last crazy thing before settling to a life of comfort and calm.

He folds one hand with Q's, feeling the heavy ring against his partner’s finger and letting his heart beat faster for it.

One of Q’s minions raises her voice, trepidatious. “Quartermaster, M is on his way and he says -”

“Stop,” Q tells her. “Don’t finish that sentence. If you don’t finish it then I haven’t heard it. Please mind the pipeline for the afternoon, Josephine, I’m afraid I need to step away for the rest of the day.”

“Sir -”

“I have the utmost faith in you, Josephine, and I’ll be sure to remember when quarterlies come ‘round that you stepped up to the task with aplomb,” Q tells her, kissing James again, stepping back from him, laughing as he’s pulled into another kiss and finally breaking away. He grabs his jacket and turns back towards the door, then stops again. “Bloody hell, Bond, I don’t even have - wait! Yes, I do!”

James blinks, eyes narrowing in a smile as Q rummages across his workbench.

“Here! Here,” he says, holding out a burnished steel ring for James to see before quickly pocketing it. “It’s not finished yet but once it is, it will serve as a low-level means to disrupt simple circuitry. A glorified magnet, essentially, but low-profile and discreet. Hold your hand up to a security system and you’ll fry it. Not especially useful for subtle maneuvering but you never know when - do you even care?”

Bond’s brows lift, and he shakes his head with a laugh. “Not anymore, no.”

“Sod it, then, it’s a bloody wedding ring. Lawrence, we need the boat.”

“Back to headquarters, sir?”

“Away from it, if you will, quick jaunt down the Thames. Josephine,” Q says, as he passes, turning to walk backwards as he shoulders into his coat. “I owe you for this.”

“Scotch is always nice,” she suggests with a smile, and Q falters in his steps, blinking wide, before he nods.


	6. Priority Inversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _James watches Q as though he is the most incredible person in the world._
> 
> _To him, truth be told, he is, entirely._
> 
> _And Bond has seen enough of the bloody world to know it._

They get home late afternoon, James parking the car in the drive and Q damn near waltzing out of it with folded documents and his ring catching the light as he moves. It still feels so new. He still looks down every few moments to see that it’s there, to remember how it was given to him, by whom, when…

He’s spent all day smiling. He’s certain he’s going to pull a muscle in his face by the end of it.

But his agent is safe. No more assignments and no more long distance agonies. His agent is alive, with him, here. His agent no more; his husband now.

Husband, for God’s sake.

James doesn’t attempt the elaborate locking system so Q opens the door, all the while laughing as James nuzzles his neck, whispers as many filthy as lovely things against him and promises that he will come and visit him at work to annoy him, constantly.

Q snorts, twisting away when Bond’s scruff tickles him. “Bollocks you will, they’ll have stripped your security clearances.”

“As if I can’t still show up?”

A brow lifts and Q laughs. “You’ll be met on the bridge before you’re within a kilometer of headquarters and turned right back around,” he says, tilting himself into the house and closing the door behind them to lock it up again. The cats don’t come for them yet, sprawled across the couch this early in the afternoon.

Q grasps Bond by his lapels and pulls their bodies together, licking a long, languid kiss against his throat. He hollows his cheeks and makes his mark there, mouth parting damp.

“Now I’ll finally be able to get some work done.”

“God, how terrible,” James groans, slipping his own hands through Q’s hair, behind his ears, pressing softly to the spot that has him shivering and arching as any cat might - and James is now certain Q is at least half cat - down his neck, to the front of his shirt. “I’ll find more of my ties stolen, I suspect.”

“I borrowed.”

“You look very dashing,” Bond confirms, snaking his arms around Q’s middle and picking him up to carry him further into the house. “Just as my husband should.”

Q holds tight around James’ neck and kisses him relentlessly, enough that Bond almost trips going up the stairs. Q can feel the press of warm titanium against his finger every time he moves his hand, unyielding and solid and real. It feels so much like the man in his arms that he laughs against his mouth before kissing him hard enough to nearly send them both toppling backward.

“Let me have at least a bloody day to be married to you before you off me,” Bond mutters, a hand against the railing as Q grins against his cheek instead.

“Promise me,” Q whispers. “Promise me you’ll let yourself go.”

“Down the stairs?”

“Not down the - no,” he laughs. “In retirement.”

“You want me to be fat and sluggish.”

“I want you to be content,” Q tells him, holding James’ face in his hands when they reach the second story and steady ground again. His legs tighten, hooked heels squeezing, to keep himself coiled around his husband. “I want you to be comfortable. Happy. And if that involves stuffing your face with sweets each day then I’ll look forward, every bloody day, to coming home and scolding you for it.”

“I think I’m the happiest man alive,” James murmurs, bending to kiss Q again, holding him secure so he doesn’t fall but drawing a high sound from him regardless, before he laughs. “Now, I think we have a moment more before the monsters make their way upstairs and forgive me, please, if I do not want to share my wedding afternoon with cats in bed.”

Q bites his lip and leans over James’ shoulder, catching the door as they pass through it and shoving it closed. It’s enough to nearly lose his balance and Bond takes the opportunity to hoist his quartermaster - he’ll always be that - over his shoulder. Sputtering laughter, Q loses any restraint entirely when there is a plaintive mew from the other side of the door.

“Just in the nick of time,” he murmurs, squeezing James’ bottom as the blood rushes to his head. “You know that I thought - nevermind.”

“Now’s not the time nor position for neverminds, Q.”

The younger man snorts, curling his arms around James’ waist, upside down. “Are you going to call me that forever?”

“I suppose,” Bond muses. “As soon as I am no longer 007 to you, you will no longer be Q to me.”

“Impossible.”

“Then you have your answer, Q,” James grins, gently slapping the quartermaster’s thigh for him to let go before he lets him drop to the bed. James crawls after him, without a care that they are both still dressed, that they will get remarkably tangled in their clothes and laugh themselves like schoolchildren to tears, as they did in the corridor outside the courthouse.

“Though I have to admit, Quinlan,” he smiles, watches the way Q’s face burns with pleasure at the sound of his name so purred. “You have a lovely name.”

“Nonsense,” Q grins, running his hands through greying-blonde hair and pausing only when the light reflects his ring again. “It’s entirely bollocks. I read once -”

“No. Only once?”

“Oh God,” Q laughs, trying to turn away and finding himself on his belly, pinned, laughing into the mattress. “I just realized what I’ve done.”

“Marrying me?”

“Marrying you, but for as long as I’ll be subjected to your miserable jokes, you’re stuck with me, a far worse fate.”

“Tell me what you read once,” Bond murmurs, smiling as he draws his nose up the back of Q’s neck and breathes him in deep.

“The Irish meaning of it is ‘graceful’, which is about as far from an accurate descriptor as can be imagined. Gaelic interprets it as ‘shaped as a well’. Altogether flattering. Do you know, I thought you were going to ask me in Austria, and spent the few moments after attempting to disavow myself from my own idiocy?”

Bond stops shifting against him for a moment and merely lays atop him instead, face next to Q’s, cheek to cheek, until the other turns and James shifts back enough to see him.

“With the Spectre ring?” He asks, watching Q flush, lift his eyes to the ceiling as though in a shrug before he closes then and James reaches to gently remove his glasses, setting them away. “Now that I think about it, the approach was rather similar, wasn’t it?”

“To?”

“How I ended up proposing,” James laughs. “God, perhaps I should have done it then? Kept our cover as newly engaged and sneaked out of the country.” He nuzzles against Q and hums. “It was a ghastly ring though, tawdry. I would hate for you to wear it.”

“Fascist cephalopods aren’t really my style,” Q admits, smile widening. He is kissed, on the corner of his mouth. He kissed again on his cheek. Again to his hairline and his temple in turn. “I’d never have asked you to quit,” he says, because it feels like an important thing to say. “I know how much the Service matters to you. But I’m selfishly glad that you did, even if we will be deprived our late-night talks on the coms.”

“I’m sure I could find a way to distract you late at night -”

“Bond.”

“- while you have to direct some other poor hapless bastard through a maze of streets.”

“I won’t take on another agent,” Q says.

“What about 009?” James asks, feigning shock. “You’d grown so attached.”

“Sod off.”

“You made him a car.”

“That you wrecked.”

“With great pleasure,” James laughs, nuzzling Q more when he squirms in delight and displeasure both. “But won’t you, really? You are a very good pointman. Incredibly reliable, you’re an asset to the Service.”

Q wriggles to his back, up along the bed, pursued and laid upon by his enormous, loyal hound of a husband. His husband. His own James. Skinny arms, still in the soft confines of his coat, curl around James’ neck and he turns his cheek to the pillow, baring his throat to the barrage of warm kisses Bond presses there.

“I know that, and I appreciate hearing it.” Bond snorts but Q shakes his head, and threads his fingers through James’ hair. “Truly. I do. But there are others I’ve trained who are just as capable, who would relish the responsibility of keeping care of an agent afield, and I - I can’t anymore. Not only because you’ve ruined me, though you have that, but the attachment that comes with it - the closeness. I’ve not enough left in me to spread so thin again. You’d never see me. I’d never be home. It would be like before but we’d not even have time together at a distance and I -”

Q opens his eyes that had slipped closed in thought, to erase the images of Austria and South Africa from behind his eyelids.

“I’ll have to talk to M but I’d rather focus on Q Branch, if I’ve any choice in it. Go back to making things, you know. Running oversight but letting others have their chance to run point. You’ve ruined me,” he says again, but with nothing less than utter warmth in his words. “I could never have another agent after you.”

“Do I sound selfish if I tell you I am entirely relieved?” Bond asks him, and Q raises an eyebrow. “It would have been very hard to watch you work yourself to death again,” he says softly. “Much as I could scold you into going to bed, and eating, I would hardly be able to do the same when you had another life in your hands. It would be entirely selfish and unfair.”

Q hums, resting his chin atop Bond’s head as he lays his cheek against Q’s chest. “No more days on end fueled by little more than caffeine and annoyance. No more nights sleeping in my office chair.”

“So you were asleep.”

“No, no,” Q echoes, as he has on so many assignments they shared. “Merely resting my eyes.”

“And snoring.”

“I don’t,” scoffs Q.

“Like hell you don’t. How do you think I knew the right moment to turn coms back on so I could see you there like one of your cats, slippers falling off and a bit of drool just -”

“Stop,” Q laughs. “Please stop.”

“Just here,” Bond murmurs, leaning up to kiss the corner of his lips. Q returns the kiss. He takes another. Their mouths close and part together and a sweep of tongues draws their bodies to arching against the other.

“You’ll come home to things fixed up all over the place,” James warns him, nosing gently against Q’s jaw. “I’ll go out of my mind with nothing to do so I’ll find things to do.”

“Like what?”

“The shelving in the bathroom,” James murmurs, parting his lips to breathe warm against Q’s throat. “It’s terrible. Hardly accessible. In a house like this it is one of the oldest set-ups I have seen in a long time. That will have to be rearranged.”

“It’s an old house,” Q murmurs, with no small amount of alarm. “Of course it’s organized in an old-fashioned way.”

“Not for much longer.”

Q squirms, as much to be held down as to express his protest. He lifts his shoulders from the bed as his jacket is slid free, arching and twisting but never allowing their nearness to separate as they begin to bare the other in inches.

“You’re not going to make it all chrome and glass like your flat, I hope,” Q murmurs. “God, I’ll have to show you the hidden rooms so you don’t blow yourself up poking about in -”

“I was aiming more for a rustic chic,” James remarks, pushing up just enough to get his own jacket off, to roll his hips deliberately with the motion. “And excuse me, hidden what?”

“Nothing,” Q blinks, brows raised as he shakes his head, and gaze slipping down to the roll of James’ shoulders and the shadow of taut muscle beneath his shirt. “Rustic chic sounds fine.”

“You know that you’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m not lying,” Q tells him, unable to resist the temptation of Bond’s belly bared when his buttons slip free. He grins a little, crooked and quick, as his ring glints in reminder. “I do think rustic chic will suit the house fine.”

They did this. Together, they survived all the statistics and reminders and paperwork associated with their various potential fates. Together, they survived hell to make it home again. And together, they fled the confines of their jobs to commit to the other in formal paperwork and signatures what they’ve always known.

That there’s no one else in the world they’d rather spend the rest of their lives annoying.

“I love you,” Q tells him, laughing when a grasping hand is caught and held against the pillow above his head.

“Don’t you distract me with that. Hidden what? Explosions?”

“Need to finish up that listening aid I was working on -”

“Q.”

“Come on,” he laughs again, arching upward from the bed, with the blessed benefit of rubbing their cocks together as he tries to kick off his shoes. “You think I’d not have built in panic rooms? Do you know me at all, 007?”

Bond laughs, delighted, hardly surprised but still astounded - every day - by his little quartermaster. Of course he has panic rooms. Of course he has plural. Of course they will all be cat-equipped for a state of necessary emergency.

He is exceptional.

Extraordinary.

Entirely Bond’s own.

“I love that I get to know you more and more,” James purrs against him, continuing the deliberately nice rocking as Q squirms to free himself from his pants next. “And they will have to be places we explore very intimately, before circumstances bind us there.”

“You want to shag in my safe rooms,” Q confirms, ceasing his struggles to regard Bond with an arched brow, trousers halfway down his hips but unable to shove further with James between his legs.

“No,” his agent - former agent - answers him. “I want to make love to you in them.”

Q laughs so hard he snorts, more than once, twisting and curving his body in a desperate attempt to free himself as Bond does little more than hinder the removal of his clothes. Their cocks, bound by cotton and wool, grind firm friction against the other. Their mouths tangle tightly together.

Q’s mind has errored, it seems, running an infinite loop of call-and-response on itself. He thinks of work tomorrow but work won’t be the same, around and around again. There won’t be another assignment. There won’t be another terse evening of dinner and small-talk in which both avoid expressing the strain they would never, never lay upon the other. There won’t be another mission that renders James wounded and exhausted, sleeping silently for days at a time after. There won’t be another explosion or runaway car or whirling helicopter with blades of death precariously close to James’ limbs.

A small and very quiet part of Q will mourn that connection that they shared, in that way - soldiers both, joined by duty and love for queen and country and the other. Late nights of listening to Bond’s whispered affection and Q easing him to sleep by telling him about his day. Q touching himself, eyes closed, as he let James hear his voice his voice during far-away seductions.

It’s a fair trade for this instead. A bloody fair trade, more than fair really, considering neither truly thought they’d ever have it. And now they’re married.

As of today.

As of only hours ago.

A fresh contract to replace the old, and begin their lives anew together.

“Christ, you’re a squirmer,” James mutters, finally pushing up enough to allow Q his freedom to remove his shirt, his undershirt, his belt… his pants James works on on his own, after his shirt and sweater and vest are tossed to the floor as well. Piece by piece they bare each other, laughing and kissing now-familiar and favourite places.

Old aches forgotten, old fears set aside for now, as they share this, as two stupid idiots in love, just married, just freed.

“Beautiful man, do you have any idea -” James whispers, but he doesn't finish his sentence.

Q just grins and whispers, “Yes.”

Their kiss says enough, tongues sweeping together through parted lips, moans rising to the space between their mouths. Their chests rub firm against the other; Bond’s hard stomach presses down against Q’s soft belly. Pointed hips rub through thin skin and their cocks rise jerking at every brush of the other’s stiff, flushed heat. All that they wear now are the rings that glide where their hands seek and squeeze.

They hardly needed bits of metal to know what the other means, but in lives built on uncertainty, there is a wonderful relief in something tangible and solid and real shared between them.

Bond slipped Q’s ID card back to himself across the table as their paperwork was arranged, brow raising at the information there that he never knew before. Q told him that he’d acquired it back without the proper forms, when he needed to go fetch him from a bloody mountain.

The bedsheets shove back beneath Q’s heels as he upsets James to his back, breaking their kiss with a gasp. A single breath is all he takes before following Bond’s pulse down to the center of his throat, across softly furred chest, further still. He splays his hands catlike against his shoulders as he ducks his head, and swallows his husband deep.

Q was the first to say _I do_ , laughing when he realized the clerk wasn’t asking him yet. When the question was asked a second time, Bond responded by nodding towards Q and murmuring, _He does_.

James curses now, hands up quick to grip against the headboard and hold himself steady as Q sucks him. He sets one knee then the other over his slim shoulders and drops his head back with a moan to let himself feel everything. Every sloppy lick and heady kiss, every deliberate suck. He lets himself hear the messy and wonderful sounds Q makes against him. He lets himself breathe in the familiar smell of their clean sweat mingling to form a scent of its own.

James bites his lip and furrows his brows and grips the headboard harder, jerking it and laughing when Q presses a knuckle against his perineum and rubs there.

It feels so good.

Q feels so good.

Q, his Q.

His Quinlan and Quinn.

His husband and partner in every possible sense.

“God, Quinn, harder,” he whispers.

“Oh.”

It’s just a breath, only a sigh, but warm breath feels cool against wet skin and James groans, belly tensing in a ripple of muscle. Q hasn’t heard his name in years, he’d all but forgotten it himself. Longer still since he’s heard it moaned. Never has he heard it moaned by someone he loves enough to give his life for, in every way.

His lips bend pink and swollen against Bond’s rigid shaft, tongue stroking slick against the pulsing veins running dark beneath delicate skin. Hollowing his cheeks, Q sucks enough to tug Bond’s foreskin up to a gathering of wrinkled skin, traces of salty precome pressed away by his eager tongue. When he grasps his husband’s cock with slender fingers, he pushes his mouth down again and rolls the skin back to bare the head, circling it with his tongue.

They were told - after enough awkward minutes passed wherein James and Q refused to stop kissing for the sake of city hall propriety - that the officiant was very sorry, but they needed the room for another couple. They attempted to recommend a nice restaurant nearby to celebrate, but clearing the room, Q had pinned Bond to the wall of the hallway instead, moaning his love down the echoing corridor.

Now James moans his adoration to the ceiling and doesn’t care if the neighbours complain. They haven't before, they will bloody well deal with it now. He doesn’t care if he comes too soon - he will push his body as he does in the field, to get back to Q, to be with him, always him.

It is much the same here.

“Quinn,” he grits out, squirming to turn over and finding himself held in place. Hardly with force, but in that way Q has of showing his dominance, of making clear his demands and wants and needs. He touches James’ thigh and he doesn’t attempt to turn over again. He merely spreads his legs wider and allows one hand down to slip through messy curls and tug them.

The informal ceremony yielded no time for them to speak vows to the other. They didn’t need to. They have spent years showing the other what they mean, years expressing their respect and admiration, their consuming love for the other in every action they’ve taken. Never was their work only for the benefit of MI6. Always was it for the benefit of the other. And when commands became kisses and orders became orgasms it all fit together in such a way that left both without doubt as to the depth of their affections.

Never, in any other circumstance, could they love someone so very much.

“Come on, Q.”

He releases Bond’s cock with a _pop_ from between reddened lips, and watches from beneath long lashes as it bounces back against his belly.

“Please.”

He slicks his fingers in his mouth and rubs them firm against Bond’s opening.

“God, yes -”

James arches, neck craning, his rough swallow visible within it before a groan rattles free. Q's toes curl and spread against the sheets, eyes rolling back as James’ lips tilt upwards and spread in a smile. He laughs, low and warm, tries to duck his head to look at Q and finds himself almost immediately pinned back and kissed hard. Pressed to the bed where he goes willingly, he parts his lips as Q curls his tongue between them, fingers between his legs.

It’s intoxicating. He is intoxicating. Bond could never imagine that he would settle, his lifestyle hardly one that coaxed people close and kept them there. Secrets and suspense and unexplained injuries, the issue of having to use his charms to seduce people he was not with… issues upon issues, over and over, led him to many one night stands and few relationships. 

In truth he doubted he would live long enough to start one.

“Hard,” he begs. “I want to wince when I wake up in bed alone tomorrow and have to finger myself open again.”

The declaration is enough to give his ardent, demanding quartermaster pause, big eyes widening larger still. Q curses, a single note of alarm and delight both, before Bond snares him by the back of the neck and drags their mouths together again. Q can hardly part their lips enough to spit, blushing, into his hand and slick himself, clambering against the older man as he aligns himself.

He grasps the headboard with both hands, breath stuttering in softened gasps as Bond kisses his chest and Q rocks unrelenting into him. Bond’s curse carries in it the guttural inflection of Scotland; his nails bend sharp against Q’s back. Q’s pointy hips will leave shadows bruised against Bond’s thighs, skin clapping against skin.

And the warmth - God, the heat of him, pulsing tight around Q’s cock, milking him with tugs of muscle squeezing hard pressure, as if by body alone he could force Q deeper. Q pushes, toes scrambling against the bed, arms shaking as he pulls himself up over his husband to fill him to the hilt. With curls spilling between them, breath cascading heat where they can’t stop panting enough to seal their lips to kiss, Q ducks his head.

“You won’t wake up alone tomorrow,” Q promises, lips curling over his teeth as he tightens his belly and tries to hold himself back from finishing so bloody soon. “Not tomorrow, not ever again. And you won’t need your fingers when I’ve got my tongue, 007.”

James curses and laughs, the sounds mingling into a helpless mewl that he sustains until his lungs burn with the need for air. He slips one hand down to grasp against Q’s thigh, the other curls around his head to hold Q’s hair. He presses their foreheads together and pants his pleasure against his husband as he takes him.

Deeply.

Thoroughly. 

Hard.

He is perfect.

It doesn’t last long. It never does, and Q scrambles to keep himself upright as his orgasm quakes through him and breaks his voice into a high, unsteady snap. It’s always been a disappointment to him when he couldn’t last more than a few minutes. Refractory period still the same as anyone else, it seemed like a failure on his part when their time together was always so uncertain.

Was.

It isn’t now.

And Q doesn’t apologize or curse. He doesn’t turn his eyes away with a crooked little frown. He laughs until his eyes grow hot and a blink loosens tears from the corners of his eyes, body echoing in clenching thighs and unsteady thrusts his pleasure and his relief in kind. Bond’s stubble scrapes rough against Q’s lips when he kisses him, uneven and clumsy, awkward and adoring. And without pause enough for either to let their heart settle, Q slips his cock free and brings trembling legs to either side of Bond’s hips, rubbing back against his length.

James groans, sweaty and shaking again, damn near languid in his pleasure. He is leaking copiously, trembling and so close he is fairly sure Q will touch him and it will be enough. 

He slips his arms down to circle Q’s hips and holds him close as he rocks up between his cheeks, and watches Q as though he is the most incredible person in the world.

To him, truth be told, he is, entirely.

And Bond has seen enough of the bloody world to know it.

Q splays his hands across James’ chest, fingers fanning wide as he drags his thumbs over stiffened, dark nipples. A jolt cuts through Bond’s moan beneath him and hardens his body. Q bites his lip and grins. He reaches for the nightstand but his wrist is caught and hand returned.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Some of us have to go to work tomorrow,” Q reminds him fondly. “Preferably without a limp.”

“You won’t need it,” James mutters, and Q’s smile brightens luminous as blushing cheeks curve high and his eyes narrow. He strokes James’ nipples again, slow circles that mirror the lazy rocking of his hips. Bond’s cock twitches harder, already so rigid it’s near purple where it peeks from beneath Q’s groin.

It is slow and deliberate and works James up like bloody clockwork every time. Since Q had learned this, he had taken a lot of pains to do this to him. Touching and licking and sucking. Little nibbles and tugging that sent James to blushing sobs every time.

As James adores that Q cannot hold his pleasure, that he loses himself quickly every time, so, he supposes, Q loves this about him. That something so simple as tweaked nipple could have Bond in a frenzy of pleasure.

He draws his nails gently down Q’s sides and arches up, deliberate undulations rubbing him closer and closer to his orgasm. Q is as practiced, as attentive, as focused on this as everything else that he does. A shadow marks the thin crease in his brow. He hunches his shoulders and ducks his head, squeezing his thighs to grip Bond’s cock tighter beneath his body. His spine rounds on every downward thrust until he finds his rhythm and then spreads a hand up James’ shoulder, up his arm, to slot their fingers.

Their rings press together.

Q’s other hand curls, nails raking over Bond’s nipple, and as his cock rises stiffly against the soft skin of Q’s perineum, Q moans and pinches and twists just enough.

Just right.

And he laughs as Bond bucks and nearly unseats him.

He comes swiftly and hard, hot between them, smearing them in mess that they will languidly sluice from each other in the shower later. James gasps, moans Q’s name and shivers beneath him, eyes closed until he can breathe again, eyes closed and lips parted and body pliant and open and vulnerable to anything Q wants to give him.

A predator showing his stomach, pliant and adoring, to the hand of his master.

His equal.

“God, you are perfect.” James licks his lips and lets them click as he parts them, opening his eyes to look at Q properly.

Q rolls his eyes, smirking even as James cradles his cheek to turn him to the bed. They lay on their sides, facing the other. “I believe this is what’s called the ‘honeymoon period’,” Q murmurs. “Tell me how perfect I am a year from now when you wake up yet again to the same mediocre Earl Grey tea I’ve made you every morning for - well, years already.”

“I will,” James agrees, and their grins widen into laughter.

“Then two years from now,” Q muses, “when I attempt to smother you with a pillow to stop your ceaseless snoring.”

“Says the man who scares Desmond from the bed with his,” James remarks back, brow raised, grin wider. It’s so easy. It’s so warm. This is what they have earned and fought for and deserve. Peace together. Love together. Having someone who will understand their inability to sleep some days, and desire to exert all their energy others, someone who will hold them through a nightmare and make coffee at two in the morning, someone who will kiss them good morning and nuzzle them good night.

With a sigh, James nuzzles the pillow.

“I suppose we should let the beasts back in, shouldn’t we.”

Q hums, turning half onto his stomach, one arm beneath his cheek, the other across James’ back. A leg curls over him, too, until he’s lying almost atop him. Bond’s lips part warmth against his throat and Q shivers, hips bending against the bed.

“You should, yes. Absolutely.”

“So much for the honeymoon period.”

“Mmm,” agrees Q, tucking his nose against Bond’s brow with a smile. “Right into ‘old married couple’, I’m afraid, although Q Branch has been calling us that for years already.”

James snorts, letting his eyes close as Q nuzzles him lazily.

“Who knew,” he mumbles. “They earned their ‘intelligence’ label.”

“Not exactly a leap,” grins Q. “Anyone who’s ever heard us work together has been privy not only to some of the finest work MI6 has ever seen -”

“Your humility truly knows no bounds.”

“- but,” continues Q, “they’ve just as frequently witnessed eminent acts of patience in the face of ceaseless, gruff grumbling, sarcasm, snide remarks, destructive tendencies, and - often - what can only be described as a piss-poor attitude.”

Bond cracks an eye, a smile drawing lines from its corner. “I have been forgiving, haven’t I?”

Q laughs, loud and sudden and bright, lifting his fingers to cover his eyes as he snorts. He tightens his arm around James’ neck and squeezes a kiss where their lips meet against the pillow. And then he kisses him again. And again. And again and again until he finally forces himself to stop and tilt unsteadily from the bed to let their cats into the room.

James doesn’t even move when he feels Peter’s familiar feet patter over him and his purring muzzle push against his hair.

“Hello darling,” he mumbles as the cat mewls and continues purring, nudging his whiskered nose against James’ sensitive skin just behind his ear. He meows again, louder, and James sighs. “I know, love, I know - I married him.”

Another mewl.

“I did, truly. I can’t bloody believe he said yes either.”

Q watches them through mussed curls as he crouches, curling Desmond into his arms and cradling him close when he straightens again. Bond’s nose twitches in a flicker of almost-pain when Peter begins to knead his back, rumbling a purr.

“You’re right, of course,” Bond says. “I really did it so that I could be tenderly shredded to pieces by you. I haven’t told him that, yet, but I’ll not let him - ah,” he winces. “No, I promise, I’ll not let him shut the door on you again.”

Q lifts a brow and tries to fight down a smile. “Should I leave you two be? I’d hate to interrupt the happy couple.”

“A cuppa would be nice too, love, when you’ve the time,” James mumbles.

“Sod off.”

“I love you.”

Q grins, burying his face in the grey cat’s fur. He watches James try to twist an arm back to tug the cat off himself and Peter merely sits in it, fitting into his palm, just his tail hanging loose.

“I would love you so much more if you managed to get him off me so I could shower and not mess the sheets,” James adds.

“First you want to be alone with Peter, then you want tea,” chides Q, raising his chin and a brow, lofty in the way Bond’s quartermaster always has been. Just as beautiful. Just as bold. But far more bare than James is used to seeing him when he gets that look in his eye, and more’s the better for it. “Then you’ll undoubtedly want me to draw you a bath. Sit with you in it, scrub your back…”

“Would you? That would be lovely.”

“Of course,” Q murmurs, feigning a begrudging tone as he steps close enough to set Desmond to Bond’s back, before retreating with clicking feet, down the stairs that squeak, to set on the kettle.

James groans, pretends to struggle beneath the warm furry creatures, before Desmond slips from him to curl on Q’s pillow, and Peter curls much the same but atop James, just behind his shoulders. The weight is actually entirely welcome, and despite knowing he will have to remake the bed with new sheets before they go to bed, James allows himself to doze like this, one foot out from under the messy sheets, one arm beneath his pillow, the other still awkwardly twisted back to reach Peter.

He hums and smiles when Q draws his fingers through his hair and works it from his face. He turns into the touch and opens his eyes when it goes away, when Q leaves to draw them a bath.

When he returns, he looks sleepy, little, dishevelled and fucked out. He yawns and rubs his eyes and James makes a soft sound of need. Not prurient, not sexual, something so utterly human, to wonderfully intimate that he can barely hold it in.

Q stands beside him, bare and open in a way he rarely allows himself to be, even when they’re together. He’s always quick to tug on a pair of briefs or throw on a jumper, always quick to slide beneath the sheets. He makes no effort now to hide his nudity, hardly flaunting it, but in merely standing as he is, without reservation, without insecurity, Bond is certain he’s never seen Q more beautiful than this.

“I keep having moments,” Q tells him, his voice soft, his smile lingering in the muscles beneath his eyes. “Thoughts, you know, sporadic things that come out of nowhere. It’s like when I’ve forgotten to do something at work. When I’m late for a meeting. And it keeps coming back to me like that, again and again, in odd moments, that we’ve just run away and gotten married.”

He laughs as he says it, a breath wrought with awe and disbelief. Bond’s smile spreads.

“It’s like fireworks,” Q says. “Not the big booming ones but the ones that flare up silent and burst and glitter. You don’t have to go in the field again,” he says, voice hardly above a whisper, but incandescent with relief and joy alike. “I don’t have to be afraid for you anymore. And we get to spend the rest of our lives together. I always felt so old, you know, since they recruited me I’ve felt decades beyond my years. Stress and pressure. You know, I’m sure it’s the same feeling you have, aged by our work and all, but now -”

He stops to catch his breath and sigh.

“We have so many years left,” he murmurs. “So many more than there were when we awoke this morning. Everything’s different in concept but it’s also entirely the same. You, here. Me, making tea. Peter and Desmond. It’s the same world we were in before, but every time I think about it, there’s a flash,” he says, spreading his fingers and closing them slowly, “that illuminates a world we couldn’t see before.”

A laugh issues softly as he ducks his head and spreads his hands across his face, holding them against his eyes, and then he folds his arm with a warm, ruddy-cheeked smile.

“Oh,” Q says, nose wrinkling as he grins. “And your tea’s getting cold. Sorry about that.”

James watches him, entirely fond, sleepy in his pleasure. After a moment he unfolds the arm that curls beneath his pillow to reach for Q, enough that their fingers brush when Q drops his own hand to touch him, enough that they have that contact.

“Sap,” he whispers, lightly tugging Q’s fingers to pull himself across the bed and kiss his stomach, the cat still perched on him as he does. “Terrible habit for a stoic Englishman.”

Q shivers, although he isn’t cold. To the contrary, he’s warm all over, when James looks at him that way, kisses his stomach again. When he threads his fingers through James’ hair and watches golden blond and silver ripple beneath his touch. His belly tenses, tickled ever so slightly by the scrape of stubble across it, and when Q finally breathes out again, it’s with a little laugh.

“You’ve always brought out the worst in me,” he assures him, stepping back but squeezing their fingers tighter together. “Come on. Up with you, 007. I’ve to change the sheets and you need a bath.”

“I can do that,” James tells him.

“I know very well that you can,” Q tells him with a smile. “And so I will. Up. Bath. I will be there once this is done.”

“The beasts won’t follow, will they?”

“Not huge fans of water, these two,” Q snorts, and James laughs, grasping the blanket to hold and quickly turning onto his back, so that Peter isn’t displaced. The cat does twitch his tail though, aware of the sneaky betrayal. James climbs out of bed with a wince, and stretches his arms over his head and back with a pleased groan.

Q watches, sly, from the corner of his eye, holding his lip between his teeth. He can’t be faulted for that - it’s a spectacular view. And so he allows himself a moment of enjoyment in observing the particular dimples at the small of Bond’s back, and the way his bottom curves plump to meet his thigh.

Which of course, means he’s staring, hands snared motionless in the sheets, when Bond glances back to him and arches a brow.

“See something you like?”

“Show-off,” snorts Q, tugging the sheets from the bed and sending both the cats leaping to his desk.

“And yours, now,” James tells him, walking past and setting a palm to Q’s cheek as he kisses the other one. “For good.”

“You’d better remember it,” Q replies, smiling, as he watches his husband make his way to the bathroom to wait for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've fallen for these two as hard as they've fallen for each other. Though this particular portion of their story is through, we have plenty of timestamps and one-offs for them under our belt, and cannot wait to share them with you. Subscribe to either of us for updates, and thank you all so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

>  **Checkpoint** \- Checkpoint, in computer programming, is the point in the program source code where progress can be halted, while running, until conditions are suitable for progression to the next stage.


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